


Death in Love

by Aspirina_Effervescente, Cyanidechan



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), BAMF Aziraphale (Good Omens), Body Horror, Cross posted EFP.net, Crowley Has PTSD (Good Omens), Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley Whump (Good Omens), Crowley has Trauma from the Fall (Good Omens), Depression, Dissociation, Drug Abuse, Fluff and Angst, Genderfluid Crowley (Good Omens), Heavy Angst, Horror, Hurt Crowley, Hurt Crowley (Good Omens), Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Inspired by: Tartini’s Sonata The Devil’s Trill, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, M/M, Madam Tracy is a better mother than God herself, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, Protective Aziraphale (Good Omens), Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Temporary Character Death, but it will get better, funky format, ghost story, they say friend to say I love you (and this is bloody important)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2020-03-03
Packaged: 2020-10-26 10:20:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 51,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20740631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aspirina_Effervescente/pseuds/Aspirina_Effervescente, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cyanidechan/pseuds/Cyanidechan
Summary: After tempting a composer to fame and success, Crowley is cursed by his wife and tormented by her ghost until the end of his days.Aziraphale would do anything to save him, the only problem is that he doesn't know what's going on and, anyway, the problem could be much more complicated than it seems.Inspired by Giuseppe Tartini’s Sonata “the Devil’s trill”





	1. Prologue: Hidden Desires

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [La morta Innamorata](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/522893) by Aspirina Effervescente & Cyanidelovers. 
**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a demon tempts a composer and then everything go pear-shaped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please, note that English isn't my first language so there will be probably some mistakes. I'm doing my best to correct them all with the help of our fantastic beta-reader @quiet_or_die. It's slow work but we are doing our best to do it!

_“Yes, I have loved as none in the world ever loved—with an insensate and furious passion—so violent that I am astonished it did not cause my heart to burst asunder. Ah, what nights—what nights!”  
― Théophile Gautier, La Morte Amoureuse_

〄

** A dwelling in a stormy night, Padua, Italy, 1713 **

That night the composer had a dream.

_ (Or at least, what resembled a dream.) _

** Larghetto affettuoso, in 12/8. **

The music filled the air:  
cheerful, sad, slow and fast, passionate and melancholy, white and black.

"Who's playing so masterfully in the dark of night?"

"The name’s Crowley," replied the man in the black suit and dark glasses who gently caressed the strings of a red violin in the shadows of the studio.

"Who are you? Why are you in my house? How did you get in? "

"You invited me."

** Allegro, in 2/4 **

The red-haired man lowered his head slightly, like a nod, never ceasing to play, revealing impossible yellow eyes.

"_Mio Dio_, snake eyes!" The Venetian exclaimed frightened, but then remained silent as the notes invaded the night air.

A grin;  
The man trembled.

"Demon—thing of evil—man in the shadow, you who play such a beautiful sonata, what can you want from a poor musician like me?"

"The point isn't what I want from you," replied the demon and the hand slid lightly on the violin strings.  
"The point is what you want from me."

There were no other noises in the house, nor crunches of old wooden beams, nor the wind whining through the loose shutters, not even the ticking of the old pendulum. Only the sound of the violin invaded the room and the roar of thunder outside the window.  
As if the studio were no longer in his home but another dimension.  
The man startled, suddenly realizing who or what he had in front of him.  
It isn’t essential to understand how he knew; the important thing is that he understood.

"I _will not_ make a deal with a demon; I _will not _sell my soul to Hell."

"Good," Crowley replied with an impossibly affectionate smile, "Humans, always the same."

He laughed;

"Always so worried. I allowed you to know the difference between good and evil, right and wrong."

He laughed again;

"But I know men like you, Giuseppe. Always so bored, always looking for something… being good is so damn boring after a while. Tell me, what are you looking for? A bit of celebrity and endowment, the hope to be remembered forever?"

The young man's eyes lit up.  
_ Ah, here it is,_ the demon thought.  
_ The real human condition, the gruelling search for that something. _

"Could you do that?"

_These humans, always so curious. _

"Ah, what is damnation when your memory can live forever?" The demon asked.

"When someone remembers us forever, and our memory is wrapped in admiration and praise, when we will be forever the great composer, the great inventor, why should we fear Hell's flames?"

** Andante-Allegro-Adagio, with alternation of 2/4 (Allegro) and 4/4 (Andante, Adagio). **

"My boss was a little annoyed when he heard that someone said that you play better than him."

Thunder; lightning.  
The demon smiled.  
For once, there was the right atmosphere. 

"He doesn't like it when someone questions one of his favourite talents. But to be honest, I think it's normal. He's always been a proud guy."

Thunder; lightning.

"But I said, let's see what happens to move the waters a little. I have always loved humans. They’re still so full of hidden and inventive desires. Brilliant. This isn’t even my job, so to speak. I don't make deals. I tempt people, I whisper in their ear. But this is something different. Those below take it personally sometimes.  
  
“An exaggeration, if you ask me. But I'm a demon, unlike humans, I don't have free will. It’s a big nuisance to not have it, believe me.  
  
"Whispering and tempting are... more my style. I can usually leave it to your lot all the work. In my opinion, you are too many now. Those below don’t want to understand that, given the increasing number, it has become exhausting to do this kind of door-to-door service and tempt you one by one, you should look at the big picture. It's simple economics, Amico mio.

"But after all,“ the demon said, slowing his long and rambling monologue "What is more seductive? Not a woman, not money, it's not even respect or fame."  
"It is the promise to live forever in the hearts and minds of men."

Rain;

"Think about it, Giuseppe. Being the greatest composer of all time, the one who discovered a new way to play the violin."

Rain, rain;

"Can you feel it? The third sound. It is right there, between the two notes, it can be perceived, but you don’t hear it, as if two violins were playing. Only one visible; the other invisible.”

A thunder;

"How do you do that?" The composer asked.

“No, no, no, my friend. A devil doesn’t give up its secrets.  
But I can give you this sonata of mine. It's yours if you want it. My hands are at your service, just a nod, and I will write down my best notes for you."

The man moved undecided.  
A nervous movement, he shifted his weight from one foot to the other.  
The demon smiled sweetly.  
_He had already won. _

“And my soul?”

“Well, you already know the answer.”

"What if I had a counter proposal?"

_ Oh!  
_ _ Humans, always so full of surprises. _

"What kind of proposal?"

“I could rewrite this sonata."

_ So stubborn, so proud, so so arrogant. _

"If I can do it better than you, I can keep my soul and my music."

A grin.

"If I can't do it, you can claim my soul."

Rain, rain, rain;  
thunder, lightning, thunder.  
The demon smiled.

〄

“One night, in the year 1713, I dreamed I had made a pact with the devil for my soul. Everything went as I wished: my new servant anticipated my every desire. Among other things, I gave him my violin to see if he could play. How great was my astonishment on hearing a sonata so wonderful and so beautiful, played with such great art and intelligence, as I had never even conceived in my boldest flights of fantasy. I felt enraptured, transported, enchanted: my breath failed me, and I awoke. I immediately grasped my violin to retain, in part at least, the impression of my dream. In vain! The music which I at this time composed is indeed the best that I ever wrote, and I still call it the _Devil's Trill_, but the difference between it and that which so moved me is so great that I would have destroyed my instrument and have said farewell to music forever if it had been possible for me to live without the enjoyment it affords."

〄

** Church of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, Padua, Italy, 1770 **

If you believe those old rumours that demons dance uppon graves, you are wrong.  
First of all, demons don't dance. Not well, at least.  
Secondly, most graves are blessed, and if they aren’t, it is only because they are all piled up in cemeteries, and those are always consecrated grounds.  
The few tombs far from the consecrated ground are often tombs of pagans or people believed to be possessed by the Devil. Many devils laugh at this last belief because, usually, these people had never come into contact with supernatural entities.  
Therefore, demons don’t dance on graves.

All demons, in general, tend to stay far away from churches as well as cemeteries, hardly a devil wants to test his fortune to find out if on the first contact with the ground, he will catch fire or suffer only a few burns.  
After all, demons know how much misfortune brings too much curiosity.

Furthermore, holy ground's water quickly becomes holy water and considering that we all know the terrible effects of the liquid on the demons mentioned above you can imagine how much the fallen avoid these places.  
Now that you have acquired this knowledge, you can imagine why the sight of the demon Crowley as he walked down the alleys of the cemetery, straight as a nail and forgetting his ridiculous swagger for once, was at least a singular vision.

He didn't know why he was there.  
There was a force outside his reach that was guiding him, binding him to his corporation, forcing him to put one foot in front of the other, taking away even the possibility of pulling back or reacting to the pain he was feeling.  
He walked along the path until he arrived in front of the small church and entered it, keeping his eyes blank throughout his pilgrimage.

There was no one in the church.  
Only a woman dressed in mourning, a long black veil covering her head and face, so long that it touched the beautiful church’s floor.

"You must be the demon Crowley." The woman commented as she heard the slow, creeping steps of the man behind her.

"Why did you call me?" He asked.

"Three days ago, he died."

〄

** Soho, London, England, 499 days after the Apocalypse that never was **

The first and last time that happened before his eyes, Aziraphale thought it was one of those strange things that Crowley did.  
They had spent a pleasant evening in one of those fancy restaurants that the angel loved so much. Surrounded by delicious food and good music, an angel and a demon had laughed and joked and, after several bottles of wine, come to recall old adventures — the most embarrassing of course — and they had begun to laugh out loud at the memory of so many moments spent together.

Then, suddenly, something happened:  
Outside the door, there was a boy with a violin in his hand. The violin’s case was open, and some good man had already left there some quarter to support him. The boy seemed to be half-dead with hunger, but as soon as he started playing the notes they had slipped under the door, through the tables, the chairs, the decorated columns, and everyone had stopped talking for a moment.

The music was beautiful, equally cheerful and melancholy.  
Aziraphale looked at Crowley, and he remained silent for a long time, his eyes fixed on something he could not see, lost in his thoughts.

Then the music changed, more cheerful and energetic, something that didn't seem to belong to this land.  
That was when it happened:  
With a jerk, Crowley rose from his chair.

At first, Aziraphale had followed him with his eyes with an arched and questioning eyebrow, but the tall, thin man in front of him hadn’t said a word, didn’t apologize for his behaviour or took his jacket. He got up from his chair and left the room, leaving his friend with his mouth half-open, like someone who has a very urgent question but hasn't had time to ask.  
"Please, dear, cancel the dessert order and bring me the bill." The angel asked urgently. He was on the street in three minutes, with the demon's scarf and jacket in his arms.

Crowley, meanwhile, had abruptly grabbed the boy's violin and resumed playing the same melody, with more passion and in a way he had never heard before, making the music even more emotional and otherworldly.  
He glanced apologetically at the boy fallen in the snow. The boy was looking at Crowley as if he were God himself, amazed by the demon's mastery.  
Aziraphale gave him some money, a warm coat, assuring him that he would have had a lot of luck in life if he only went home as soon as possible. The boy reluctantly left them, still enchanted by how Crowley moved his fingers on the strings.

"Crowley," called Aziraphale. "Crowley, what the hell are you doing?"  
The demon didn’t answer, didn’t seem in the least disturbed by his friend's annoyed tone, he was playing and looking straight ahead as if he weren’t even aware of the friend beside him.

“My dear boy, you’re scaring me. What’s the matter?”

A bow movement.

Long fingers were dancing on the strings.

Empty look, like a ghost, like a dead man.

“You’ll freeze to death, my dear, at least put your jacket on."

He ignored him, continuing to look straight ahead and continued to play, without stopping until dawn.

〄

** Church of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, Padua, Italy, 1770 **

“Who are you?”

  
“Elisabetta.”

“Oh, you’re the composer's wife," Crowley commented, vaguely intrigued.

The woman continued to give him her back. Her eyes were fixed on the coffin in front of her.

"My husband was a good man," she said after a long moment of silence. "Once, he had been violent, always looking for something, nervous, anxious."

"But he was a good man."

The woman would have heard the sarcastic tone if only Crowley had been able to control his voice.

The comment was said in the mildest tone one could imagine, much to the demon's dismay.

  
"He was." The wife confirmed. "He married me in secret, and when my uncle — the cardinal of this city— discovered it, he was forced to flee. I cried for a long time."

"Did you love him?"

"I still do. When we managed to find each other again, when it was all said and forgiven, we returned to this city and found a way to live a peaceful life."

  
Crowley approached her. The pain radiating from the sole of his shoes was barely bearable, his feet appeared unable to move. He didn't care too much. The woman seemed more threatening than anything.  
There was something about her, something, something... that he couldn't bring into focus.  
Her image was vibrant, like when it is scorching hot, and the horizon tremble.

"If you've summoned me to ask me to bring him back to life, I'm sorry, I can't help you. Nothing escapes death. She takes everyone in a matter of seconds, and nothing can escape her grasp.“

"No."

"No?"

"My husband lived his last years' life in terror and anguish, continuing to play that damn violin again, again and again. He no longer ate or slept."

"If you're looking for revenge, I do understand you. But you know very well that I only offered him a choice. He could have chosen a quiet life with his wife and children, but he preferred the applauses, fame and notoriety."

"Don't you dare talk about my husband like this!" She turned with a crazy look in her eyes. She threw herself at him and pushed him against one of the columns of the church.

"You know that's only the truth.”

She squeezed her hands around his neck, and he smiled.

"You know, I usually like women like you."

The hand on his neck tightened.  
He smiled again. Everything was going according to his plans.  
His plan—which might have seemed stupid—was to get killed. Well, not killed-killed. Discorporated. A human being has no weapons to kill a demon, except for the holy water that was far from the woman. So, if she had killed him, he would have returned to hell. There would have been lots of paperwork and many embarrassing questions, but in about fifty years he could return to walk free upon the earth.  
That sounded better than staying another second on the blessed ground.

"So strong and proud; you don't just live your life quietly, you don't remain apart in silence like all the others to cry for your very dead husband. No, you dress like a monster to summon a demon. To do what? Scare him? Kill him?”

She released her grip around the demon's neck. Crowley felt he could finally move more freely; he couldn’t yet lift his feet from the consecrated ground but could move his arms. He was controlling his voice again, his tone, the last words had a slight hiss hidden among the letters, the eyes were back to bright yellow.  
He didn’t understand what kind of magic could do that, and he wasn’t thrilled to find out. He had a strange feeling that he needed to fly away from that woman as soon as possible.

"Curse him." She replied, returning to the centre of the aisle.

Crowley laughed at those words.

"You can't curse me, honey. I am a demon. I am already damned for eternity, that comes with the job description."

He laughed.

"You were cursed by God. But you've never been cursed by a dead woman in love."

The laughs died as it was born.  
The words were calm, flowing as water does among the rocks.  
The demon remembered why someone says: _women know how to stay one step ahead of the devil._

"And I curse you demon Crowley. I curse you because I loved him.

"I curse you to suffer as he suffered.

"And you will never forget me because I will always be with you, and you will always remember that here, now, in this church, I have cursed you.

"And you will never again hear the sound of the work you composed for my husband. And when that happens, you'll start playing, you'll start and you won't be able to let it go.

"And you will suffer as he suffered, and fear and terror will strangle you, and you will lose the person you love the most.

"And you will cry and scream. And nothing will save you, because maybe God will also have cursed you, and you fell and burned to Hell.

"But this will be even worse than hell.

“Because God can’t understand the fire that burns when you love with your entire soul. God can’t understand the devouring emptiness that remains when your lover dies.

“My curse would make God shiver in person.

“Because it’s a dead and in love woman who curses you."

She spoke thus.  
And before the demon could say a single word, she pulled the gun from the pocket of her dress and shot herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before you continue to read this story: I wrote it with @cyanidechan while I was studying mental disorders and we've been inspired by authors like Edgar Allan Poe and Chuck Palahniuk. With this, I mean that this story it's pretty dark. I beg you to read the tags, and I hope you'll enjoy it as much as we did when we wrote it, and that you'll give some feedback and kudos <3


	2. Something Wicked

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which Crowley starts to mildly go insane, and maybe Aziraphale noticed something, maybe not.

** Church of Saint Caterina d'Alessandria, Padua, Italy, 1770 **

Crowley's first reaction was to crawl.  
_ (After all, he had been a snake, crawling was in his nature.) _

In the exact moment the woman breathed her last, he felt free to move and fall forward, on his knees, towards her. The blood had splashed on his face, hands, arms, and the only thing he could think of was the horrible sensation of sticky blood against his skin.

Shocked, he looked at her one last time: she had a terrifying look, even as dead, she had her eyes dull and wide open, a suffering expression. Despite the veil, he could see the face streaked with tears, tired red eyes as she didn't sleep for days. She would sleep now, forevermore.

Crowley turned to one side, tried to get up, but the body didn't seem to respond to his commands after spending so much time on the consecrated ground. He did his utmost to go out, to reach for the exit, and crawled all over the path, blood following him like a red serpent.

Crawling was what it was made for.

〄

** Soho, London, England, 500 days after the Apocalypse that never was **

Crowley had been playing for hours until someone had torn the violin out of his hand, exasperated.  
Obviously, that person was Aziraphale.  
The demon had followed the violin with his arms as if he weren’t able to let it go at all; when he finally removed his hands from the instrument and the bow, he did so with a sigh of pain.

"My dear, as much as I love to hear you play, it is dawn, and you must be exhausted."

The demon seemed about to collapse on the ground due to fatigue: his gaze was lost in the distance, his eyes continued to sway over the angel's shoulders, and the latter turned to check that no one was watching them.  
There was nothing behind him. Aziraphale returned to concentrating on his friend who was trembling with cold and weariness.  
It wasn't the first time it happened.

"Dear boy, let's go to my place. I'll make you a nice cup of tea.”

"Angel," Crowley called, his gaze still lost and distant, "Can you see her?”  
Aziraphale turned once more, but the streets were deserted; he took an extra moment to increase the size of his aura in case some presences weren’t visible to his eyes.  
"Whom?"  
"Nobody."

They walked towards the bookshop; Crowley was vaguely aware of the hand around his arm, as if the angel beside him was afraid he could collapse at any given moment and was holding him, ready to grab the demon if it would happen. Before he knew, they had arrived at the bookshop's door.  
He looked at his reflection in the glass, and suddenly he was too conscious of what just happened.

"Sorry... I have to go."

"Go?" Asked Aziraphale, “where?”

"At home."

"At home?"

"I have things to do, people to tempt.”

"People... to tempt?” The angel asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Plants ... I have to water my plants. Check the mailbox."

"Oh."

"And there's a movie I'd like to watch, catch some sleep."

"Of course, I understand." The angel replied, his eyes slightly worried. "You _do _look a little tired."

"Maybe, maybe."

"See you for dinner? Maybe in a week."

"Sure. Wonderful, fantastic, a week, ok... ok... It’ll be my treat."

Aziraphale watched him disappear into his old Bentley and stood there until the car turned the corner. Entering the bookshop, he couldn’t shake the feeling of loneliness mixed with concern that the demon had left on him.

〄

** Mayfair, London, England, 1770 **

Crowley found himself in his apartment in a blink of an eye. Although it was a long time since he had returned there, not even a speck of dust or dirt had dared to lean on the furniture.  
The plants were bright green, rich in flowers and — of course — free of spots. Crowley's plants were resilient and stubborn. They weren’t stupid: they knew that even the slightest imperfection would lead them to destruction. They pushed the chlorophyll to work, even more, they could grow with the minimum amount of water and sun.  
The plants were like their master: they would have appeared to be all right, even in adversity, and they would have done anything to survive.

The demon looked down at the blood-encrusted hands and suddenly felt disgusted by the vision. All he could see was red, blood, the dead woman in front of him, tears in her eyes and a look—  
_Dead, dead, dead. _

He knew that, as a demon, he would have to appreciate that sight, but the blood was so sticky and thick and smelled of rusty iron, contaminated mud, and his hands were shaking. He couldn't understand how his clothes might have been so drenched in blood.  
He spent a lot of time in that state, agitated, trembling and very, very lonely.  
For days he did nothing but wash his hands with clean water.  
But it didn't matter how often he washed them, every time he put his long fingers to his face, they returned to being wet and slimy with fresh blood.  
The plants felt his desperation and began to tremble. In their short life, they had known no greater fear than the serpent of Eden. If there was something that scared him that way, it had to be something terrible.

〄

He slept for a long time. Not as much as he wanted to.  
Every time he looked in a mirror, the woman was behind him.  
Reflected in the bathroom mirror; reflected in the windows, in the silverware, In polished marble.  
in silver plates and red wine; in his dark lenses.

Always behind him, without ever leaving, without ever being tired, even in his dreams she was a black and terrifying figure crying in front of a tomb.  
The face streaked with tears, covered by a black veil.  
Hidden, yes, but never hidden enough.  
And _dead, dead, dead._

Eventually, he got used to his curse.  
He gets used to not looking at himself anymore.  
He got used to pretending he wasn't terrified.  
When seasons began to change, when summer gave way to autumn, and autumn to winter and winter to spring, after years and years, Crowley looked at his reflection discovered that the woman was still there with the promise to torment him until the Earth stopped turning or he would die.

〄

He woke up after three months, still curled up behind the bed, sweating and shaking with the feeling that he had just had a strange dream.  
A strange dream, that's what it was.  
A dream, nothing more.  
He got up, his joints a little sore from being in that squatting position for all those weeks, without having even moved once.  
A dream.  
He convinced himself for a moment, a very long second until he looked at himself in the mirror. She was always there, frightening and beautiful, wonderfully terrifying.  
Crowley looked at her, studied her for a moment.  
"Go away." He growled, looking at her with hatred.  
But she remained there, judging him in silence.

〄

** Mayfair, London, England, 1860 **

A woman, tears, a shot.  
Crowley woke up with a jolt.

Again.

A woman, tears, a shot.

Again.

A woman, tears, a shot, tears, blood.

Again.

"I curse you because I loved him."  
Tears, a shot, blood.

Again.

Blood, blood, blood.

Again.

Crowley woke up with a start.

For a century, every night, always like this.  
A century and she was there for every second of it, every moment, and there was no way to escape for him.  
Crowley knew this for specific information: any pain, with time, could be endured. He was a demon. He was built to be strong and resilient. So for a long time, he had lived consuming unbridgeable confidence in the future. He had done everything, of course, to get rid of the woman:  
He had destroyed the bodies with hellfire. He had sealed the tomb again. Tried to sleep... but she followed him, perpetually, even in dreams.  
He had melted into a whirlwind of alcohol and drugs, because despite everything, humans could always amaze him, abandoning himself to the unique pleasure of all those substances that left him like a hollow body against the dirty mattress of an old shack.

He had tried to let himself go to the pleasures of the flesh, to the ecstasy of the body; but his skin was stiff and numb, and she always looked at him, whatever he did.  
And he was so cold, and nothing could warm him.  
Thus he continued with his continuous cycle of systematic destruction, not in the hope to find relief but because he didn't know what else to do. So he did it, all over again.

〄

He had no voice to scream anymore and the unshakable faith in the future, which had accompanied him for more than five millennia, had inevitably worn out. And now his smiles began to be faker and more forced, resembled a permanent paresis, but in the end, he never had the heart to let go and just die.  
But, with time, everything changes. Crowley had grown accustomed to not meeting his eyes with mirrors and shiny surfaces for fear of seeing her. He had become used to his curse.  
He always continued to hope, to pray if you want, to be left in peace, to snatch a little moment of peace and tranquillity.

_That's enough.  
__Please enough.  
_Go away.

But she obviously would never have left him. It took incredible willpower to get out of bed and be able to write a letter to the angel asking him to meet at St. James's. That one evening spent with Aziraphale, eating crêpes and drinking French wine, was the only time he felt himself again.  
But nothing was like before.  
And he was tired, so tired.  
So he gave up.

He prayed for a little mercy by the angel.  
He prayed again for the end of the torture.  
He wasn't surprised, however, when his prayers weren't heard.

〄

** A ruined shack, In the slums of the city of London, England, 1920 **

Crowley knew he was making a mistake.  
He knew it was wrong.  
He didn't care, anyway.  
A century spent sleeping, yet he still felt incredibly exhausted.  
And she was always there, of course.  
The demon laughed.

_What, don't you think it’s funny?  
_A fallen angel cursed by God herself who is more frightened of a little woman who died a century and a half before.  
He laughed;  
He could no longer look in the mirrors, couldn’t sleep or eat, alcohol loathed him, and drugs were no longer enough.  
_(This never stopped him. Despite the disgust, he always wanted more, more, more.) _

So he stayed day and night on that old dirty mattress, wholly detached from his body, floating amid pain, nausea and disgust, while lower down a man crawled over him, kissed him. Touching him, not in a gentle way.  
He pulled his hair.  
It wasn’t important.

_Really, why should he have cared? _

It wasn't like he was aware of what was happening.  
And Crowley laughs, laughs.  
Humans are so _wonderful._ More frightening than God and Satan altogether.  
Cruel;  
Evil;  
So very terrifying.

For a moment, he saw nothing, only the woman approaching him:  
His mind at this moment was a river of white and grey fog, black smoke, desolate land and he was in the centre, floating inexorably here and there and everything was burning, and she was there looking at him, not laughing or speaking, she was just _looking. _

Crowley just wanted to scream:  
_ Go away, go away, for somebody’s sake, leave me alone. _

But all he could do was grumble miserably:  
_ Forgive me, please, I'm sorry, please, forgive me. _

And he_ did _try to escape, but the man grabbed him by the arms and forced him to stay still. Crowley didn't care. The demon began to scream, looking at the woman approaching him, terrified.  
And suddenly everything became too much:  
The fog was too thick. He couldn't see where he was. His breathing was laboured; his lungs were burning. The stomach contracted and jerked between the spasms. The feeling was like if a huge snake was trying to climb up through his throat.  
  
The eyes were large, wide-open, the pupils dilated to an incredible extent. He didn't see anything, _had he gone blind?  
_The man doesn't seem to notice.  
His touch was painful, burning, it choked him.  
_A demon? The devil? Satan? _

The man was heavy and smelled of alcohol and was dirty, disgusting, like one of those demons that had never left Hell.  
_ Was that Hell? _

Crowley made a pathetic sound, a sort of half-hissing and a thin, half-howl, a sobbing whisper:  
“Aziraph—”  
He failed to finish the word.  
The man had taken him by the throat, trying to choke him, and he couldn't move, he couldn't see, and he couldn't breathe.

Then three things happened before he lost consciousness:  
The eyes were a thin slit, between the lashes and the tears he could see only a vague streak of light.  
The weight over his body was suddenly gone, there weren’t hands around his neck, and he felt he could breathe again. Crowley opened his livid mouth with a gasp and tried to inhale as much air as possible; the lungs burned, the body trembled and the demon felt his lungs move under the flesh, violenting spasming like when you have been underwater for too long.

Someone touched him gently, wiped the tears from his face, but he continued to tremble pathetically; gentle hands wrapped his naked body in a clean blanket and held him against a soft chest.  
"My dear boy, what have you done to yourself?" The most beautiful voice he had ever heard whispered.

_Everything, _he wanted to say, _I sent an innocent man to hell. His only fault was that he was too bright.  
__That woman cursed me. Then she shot herself._  
They died because of me.  
But he couldn't say any of this, and before he could even make a sound, he blacked out: for the first time, after a century and a half, he was lulled into a dreamless sleep.


	3. Dangerous memories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Music is very important to Crowley, Aziraphale is less obvious than you could assume, and sometimes women's ghost says the worst things.

Aziraphale wasn’t a fool.  
He could look like he were too soft and kind, too good or permissive.  
But he was certainly not a fool.

If there was one thing he had learned to know, after a friendship six thousand years long, it was the demon that had remained at his side for all this time.  
He proudly called himself a _Crowley's expert_.  
Aziraphale knew all his expressions, from when he was happy and excited, curious, or insecure.  
For example, Aziraphale had learned that there was nothing the demon loved more than music.  
He had discovered it very soon, on a spring day while both were following, as always, Adam and Eve.

Cain and Abel had just been born, and the woman was cradling little Cain, murmuring a song as old as the universe. Aziraphale wasn’t sure he remembered where he had heard it before; the song was little more than a murmur, devoid of words, a sweet and reassuring familiar lullaby.

The angel had been enchanted by the woman and by the slow and calculated movements and had seen the little one, who hadn’t stopped screaming and whining until then, succumbing to sleep and quietly closing his eyes.  
Beside him, the demon looked at her like an angel looking at God. His eyes shone with a sweet smile on his mouth.

"Are you quite alright, Crawly?" He had asked, noticing the tears streaming down from the demon's eyes beside him. Crowley had put his hand to his cheek while a surprised expression bloomed on his face: _This song... reminds me of something. _

Neither of them had ever talked about the incident ever again.  
Neither of them had ever hinted that _The Song_ was suspiciously similar to the one God used to sing when the universe was young when the angels hadn’t rebelled yet and enjoyed themselves creating the firmament with her.  
When everything was still beautiful, a bit purer, and there was no pain, anguish, despair, when the universe's great engine was nothing other than the Almighty's love.  
  
He had caught Crowley over time with different instruments after that episode; the demon played the piano and the violin masterfully, the harp — Crowley, having been surprised by Aziraphale, had justified himself by arguing that playing the harp was ironically _diabolical_. Aziraphale had laughed with him, feeling a little embarrassed when he found himself thinking that the demon played _heavenly_ — he knew how to play bass, saxophone and drums, the balalaika and the sitar, the guitar and another indefinite number of instruments.

One of his greatest satisfactions was to have invented Jazz*. He had written operas together with the most celebrated composers and the angel no longer remembered how many times he had accompanied him to attend operas such as _The Don Giovanni_, _T__he Barber of Siviglia, _and _The imaginary Socrate_.**

He knew all the names of the greatest composers. He could name each symphony after listening to a handful of notes.  
"Of course I love music," the demon said once after their eighth bottle of wine "Music is something absolutely diabolical. The Devil’s a terrific musician, and there is a reason if we have the best composers: think of all those melodies that stay in your head for days, if not weeks. All those annoying songs in advertisements. You should catch the masterwork I did in Italy in the 1980s*** Some songs earned me commendation and even medals!" And then he laughed pouring himself another glass of wine.

Crowley sang when he drove, crooned in the shower, when drunk and, with the great amusement of the angel, he sang completely drunk the Marseilles in Place de la Concorde. The demon, though Aziraphale, a bit ashamed for the second time, sang like an angel.

Then something had changed:  
He hadn't noticed it immediately. It had been gradual and spread over time. He couldn’t tell when or how but it was clear as a cloudless day; the demon started to alternate moments of delightful exhilaration for the music and long silences and lost glances. It had been centuries since he had seen him pick up a violin. When he noticed it was like when you find out that an old friend has died and you didn’t know. The realization arrived in a solitary evening passed to retrieve old anecdotes from memory.

Then one night, the angel had asked: _why don't you play something, old serpent?  
_A not-so-much-angelic grin was printed on his face, and he had said that with a cheerful tone.

The demon had looked at the violin as if it could turn into a monster and devour him.  
"No, better not."

And Aziraphale never saw again the violin that once was in his shop and now was lost and forgotten.

〄

With time, the angel learned to read the signs, always too dramatic, too exaggerated, too careless. Beyond the façade, he could see the sadness in the demon's serpentine eyes, the paranoia and anxiety that seemed to grip the heart and mind of his closest friend.

He had learned that there were themes he could talk about, and topics it was better to avoid. Like a diligent student, had learned about the subjects he could deal with him, what could face up with the demon and what would drive him away.  
But this was something different. For the first time, Aziraphale didn't know how to behave. It was too easy to see that there was something profoundly wrong.

At the start he hadn’t noticed; _Crowley is a demon_, the angel said to himself, _it's normal if he does weird things, he had always been a bit nervous, paranoid, and wary. _

In recent centuries, however, it had become increasingly silent, distant. On several occasions, Aziraphale had caught him watching nothing as if he were looking at something he couldn’t see. There was always that look of deep terror in his eyes when it happened, most of the time perfectly masked behind dark lenses and a cheerful attitude, fake security, and sarcastic answers.

The angel didn't know what it was. Still, over the years he had begun to notice an ever-increasing number of alarming signals: If sleeping for a whole century wasn’t enough, Aziraphale had felt a shiver down his spine when the demon asked him, on tiptoe, to supply him with Holy Water. 

He had never been able to shake off that sense of danger at those words. Although Crowley had assured him that it was only for insurance, his lost stare was frightening, as if talking to him wasn't the usual old snake, his friend, his drinking companion with the sarcastic and intelligent comments, but an empty shell.  
Sitting next to him he could smell all the alcohol he had been drinking in the last few weeks, the drugs and all the pain that seemed to come out of his aura like tongues of black fire.

_ (All those times when he had appeared in the middle of the night in the bookshop, the signs of violence, bruises and cuts, his eyes wide and the aura that gave off only terror and despair. Those silences so full of meaning, those tears, that feeling of impotence and something he could never identify.  
_ _ The desire to have his flaming sword, to shine like a star in the night, eliminate from the face of the Earth anyone who dared to touch with his filthy hands the only person he had ever loved. __Aziraphale always forgot that he was an angel and a messenger of God in those moments)._

Terrified; Crowley was so very afraid.  
And Aziraphale would have liked to shout: _NO! What's up with you, my old friend? Talk to me; please talk to me. The pain of losing you would be too great. Don't do this to me; tell me what scares you so much.  
_But he never did.  
Because at the time he thought it was better not to cross certain borders.  
Aziraphale understood, one night spent in his bookshop drinking wine alone, to be the most stupid being in the whole universe.

〄

** Soho, London, England, 30 days after the Apocalypse that never was **

"How long haven’t you slept?" Aziraphale asked one day, looking at his friend sitting on the sofa, sipping a glass of wine.

"I don't know, a few decades?"

"It's a bit strange for you."

"We don't actually need to sleep, Aziraphale," Crowley replied in a slightly annoyed tone.

"No, of course not," the angel commented. "But, for example, I have the habit of eating, it's a hobby of mine, as you know."

"Who doesn't know?" The angel ignored the sarcastic tone.

"But for a long time, I've grown so accustomed to food that, if I don't eat, after a day or two, I'm terribly hungry, and I feel particularly weak."

"Do you think I'm weak?" Crowley asked with a sarcastic smile.

"Absolutely not, my dear." The other assured him promptly. "I think you're exhausted. I mean, I don't like to sleep — a real waste of time if you want my opinion — but after the whole apocalypse’s affair, I did it for a few days to recharge myself. And you did even more! Keep a burning car together, stop time, move three people on a different plane, the whole boring body-swapping business... I don't know how you can—"

"Aziraphale" interrupted Crowley. "Stop it, I'm fine."

His face revealed the lie behind his words: deep shadows, a terrible shade of purple and black, had set curtains for months under the yellow and shiny eyes of his friend. The feverish look, the face so thin that the cheekbones seemed ready to pierce his skin...  
Crowley wasn’t well at all. He could see his hands trembling, his gaze lost in space, long beams of fear that traversed the room like lightning, Crowley's body growing thinner, wasted, as if he was going to starve to death.

The most worrying fact was that Crowley was cold.  
It had always been. Crowley was a cold-blooded animal, after all. But lately, whenever he happened to touch his skin, Crowley felt like a statue carved in ice.  
But the most unsettling thing was the smell: sweet, like honey, like flowers in a rotten field. The smell of drugs and alcohol, too strong to be a one-night thing, too strong to be a simple pastime. They seemed more like an addiction now.  
Something he had already seen and that still tormented him.

_(The image of Crowley out of his mind, devastated, pathetic, lying against a filthy mattress, his long red hair lying on the pillow like a red fan or a pond of blood. Completely naked, while a man touches him and he cries in despair. He calls him, pronounces his name with so much pain in his voice that, like a prayer, he immediately reaches Aziraphale._   
_In an instant, he finds himself on the other side of the city, in a dirty and narrow hovel, the divine aura surrounds him and shines like the sun. He throws the man away, regardless of whether he is injured or not. He doesn’t care. The man doesn’t deserve his pity. He cares only about his oldest and dearest friend that sounds so scared and broken, wrapping warm and clean blankets around to his thin body. Immediately, he tries to catalog the damage: his arms are covered with black veins, deep purple circles mark around his eyes, the skin is feverish and sweaty and he doesn't seem to see him either._

_And when they find themselves again in the bookshop, more precisely on the apartment above it, Aziraphale holds him against his chest as if he were something too fragile and too precious, something so ephemeral that it could disappear from one moment to another._

_And this is not good, he says._   
_Crowley, by nature, shouldn't be Ephemeral._   
_He, by definition, should be Eternal._   
_So he takes him in his arms, with the delicacy of a mother, reverentially and sweet with the devotion of prayer, makes him sit in the bathtub, washes his body as gently as possible, kisses his knuckles._

_All the while, he continues to mutter:_  
Go away, please, go away, go away...

_But he doesn’t seem to be talking to Aziraphale, so he continues to wash away the dirt from his hair and tears from his face, he instructs him with simple commands with a sweet and reassuring tone, "Raise your arm, my dear, here it is, tilt your head a little, close your eyes, get up." Crowley doesn’t answer, doesn’t seem to be there with him, but does what he is told, trusts blindly. It is terrifying when he shows his most vulnerable side when he is so fragile. He doesn’t speak when his body is all that remains of him._

_Aziraphale slowly wraps him in clean towels, takes him to bed, and waits until he is sure the demon has fallen asleep or until his body stopped shaking so much._  
_Until he is sure he has stopped repeating: _Leave me alone, it hurts, I can't do it, I can't...

_But even later, Aziraphale is surprised to find that he cannot get away from him. So he stays there, takes a book trying to distract himself with a novel that is soon forgotten. He is too focused on touching the hair of this beautiful creature, the quintessence of sin and desire, that at a time seemed to be the most divine being from Heaven when he slept but which now seems perpetually tormented both in waking and in sleep. Aziraphale touches his too thin cheek and whispers:_  
When you wake up, you'll do it after dreaming about what you love most_)._

Crowley shifted his gaze from the angel's face to a point not well identified behind him and the feeling of fear for a moment seemed to increase.  
Aziraphale turned, as he always did when his friend had these moments.  
But there was nothing. There was never anything.

"You should try to rest, my dear."

〄

** Mayfair, London, England, 500 days after the Apocalypse that never was **

She was always there with him.  
She was reflected in every shiny surface he encountered.  
He always saw her and felt her presence when he tried not to look. He tried not to notice, tried to ignore her, but he knew she was always behind him.

And he would have liked to forget, he wanted to erase her, incinerate her, but far from the bookshop, after playing all night, the demon felt so tired that he could no longer restrain himself.  
Then he turned abruptly to a shop-front and shouted: _LEAVE ME ALONE._  
But the only reaction he got was to scare only a handful of pedestrians and some tourists. It wasn't as if he had never tried to talk to her. He had done it often.  
They were never pleasant conversations.

(Aziraphale says: _You go too fast for me, Crowley.  
_ And she whispers to him: _He will never love you. He is a pure being; you are disgusting — a monster who takes pleasure in destroying everything beautiful in this world. _

Warlock hugs him by a leg, his beautiful female forms carry him in his lap, delicately because he is a lonely child and Crowley knows what it means to feel alone too.  
And she smiles: _I have always wanted to become a mother but you have taken away from me the chance of feeling life grow inside me.  
_ And she says: _You are a demon, you will never know what it means to love. _

The bookshelf burns, sheets and old books catch fire like nothing, and he doesn't breathe, he feels suffocated, and screams, cries:  
_ Bastards, someone killed my best friend! _

And she laughs wildly: _You should have died in flames, not him.  
_ And she laughs: _Now you're alone in the world.  
_ Laughs: _what will stop you from destroying yourself now? _

And it is constant torture, the skin burns, it is too hot, the heart explodes, and it hurts too much, and she touches him for the first time, hugs him from behind and he is so shaken that he isn’t even surprised by the contact, he isn’t aware.  
And she stretches her mouth in an evil smile and says: I don't think y_ou will feel his tender arms welcoming you in an embrace again. _

And she tightens her grip: _You'll never bath in his divine light again.  
_ And she says: _You are alone.  
_ Again: _Alone.  
_ Again: _He’s dead, dead, dead._)

He woke up with a cry that pierced the night air.  
Because, to his surprise, he was falling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *I don't know where that headcanon came from about Crowley inventing Jazz but I rode the wave for years anyway lmao.  
** The imaginary Socrates is an Opera that few know but, my God, is damn funny and stupid ... of course, is one of Crowley's favorite plays.  
***ok, this was a stupid joke that can only be understood in Italy. In the 80's the singer Donatella Rettore came out with a song called Kobra. The song is about snakes (quite literally)  
There's not so much to say about the song except that it's incredibly annoying but at the same time catching, you can’t shake from your head even if kill yourself and every Italian can't help but hum it as soon as they see a snake.  
To be short, it screams Crowley’s hellish work from the first note to the last. 
> 
> I’m sorry if I was late, I’m trying to work when I have a moment of break and probably there will be some mistake cause I was a bit tired when I edited this. 
> 
> As always, I love comments and I enjoy to read your opinion.  
(Oh, and if someone wants to make some art from this story, considering that someone asked, please do it, just send me the link to @Aspirina_effervescente on Tumblr cause I want to see it!)  
Have a good night, Ciao!


	4. Terror in the Mirror

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nothing good happens when you dream of falling.

The first sensation he felt was astonishment.

Then the Fall.  
Meters and meters, kilometres and kilometres.  
Ten billion light-years down, he was falling, falling, falling.  
Nothing could stop him.  
The feeling was total terror, and he shouted because there was no one to hear him, and he cried, even though he knew well that no one would come to save him. He felt every fibre of his being stretched, rubbed, tore and pull apart, every molecule in his body that was rotting and melting.  
Teeth, hair, legs and arms.

Everything broke, became stardust, and he didn't know what to do, it was so much that he didn't even know where he started and the wind that whipped his face ended.  
There was a deafening noise that made him tremble in the depths.  
He screamed: _What’s this? What is this?_

But no one answered only the constant noise that radiated like waves all around him and suddenly realized that it was _ he  _ who screamed and couldn’t stop.  
_ Pain isn’t the worst part. _

It hurt, a deep ache, he couldn't stand it, it was like being burned alive and being thrown into a tub of ice water all the same time.  
He was drowning in liquid fire and was burning in ethereal water.  
This shouldn’t have frightened him. He didn't know why he shouldn't have.

_Why?_

It was a terrifying thing, to freeze and burn.  
But maybe that's not what was scary. Not really.  
Not this one.  
What was really terrifying, was the black liquid that enveloped and suffocated him, gripped him and tightened around him, like the coils of a snake. The slime was slippery, it smelled like rotting corpse, it ended up in the throat and burned and was cold, filled it inside and heard a voice saying: _ This is what you are now._

Then, suddenly, it became dark.   
Black, dark, terrifying.  
The darkness was so deep that it gave him the impression that, if he had contemplated it for too long, he would have sucked in every shred of consciousness. Closing his eyes was an instinctive form of defence, like reaching out to something to hold on as he felt reality disintegrate.  
He realized that there was no need to close his eyes. Not anymore.

This was because he no longer had eyes, they had melted and had pour off, and the wind was aching, lashing around him, entering in his brain, as he felt every part of it was and that it had been disappearing forever.  
A moment that lasted a lifetime or even an eternity, as if suspended in the split between two worlds.  
  
And he shouts: _MOTHER, MOTHER HELP ME, MOTHER PLEASE.  
_He cries: _I just asked a question. One, two or three hundred, who cares?  
_And he drooled, and his tears were blood, like the one he had on his hands: _Mother, forgive me, Mother, forgive me, Mother, Dominae, Lord, God, Father, Mother.  
___Help.

In the back of the baptistery of the church, there was a woman. And the woman wasn't really a woman, but a vibrant figure and _not right there,_ she was always behind him, wearing a black dress and a mourning’s veil that slipped all over her body and completely covered her.  
A shroud as black as night, like darkness, like something witched.  
He never saw her, not really, but he always felt her behind him, she moved at a slow pace without ever really leaving him.  
No matter how fast he went, she was always there behind him.

And she came, she arrived, she walked slowly but she never stopped, never, she was always there, and he was running faster and faster but she was still behind him and_ please, please, go away, go away, I want to sleep, I need to rest but you are always here and you never go away and please let me go, leave me, let me go, no, no, no, no, no, nononono  
  
_He always saw her, when he looked in his bathroom’ mirror when he was driving in the rear-view mirror, when walked, reflected in the shop windows when he drank, and she was a figure drowning in red wine.  
And he sometimes stopped, turned around, and asked her: __What do you want?  
And she smiled because, even though he couldn't see through the veil, he just knew that her eyes were two dull embers and her lips were turned upward in a maleficent smile.

She says: And you will suffer as he suffered, and fear and terror will strangle you and you will lose the person you love the most.  
And you will cry and scream.  
And nothing will save you.  
_Cause maybe God will also have cursed you, and you fell and burned to hell.  
_But this will be even worse than hell.  
__Because it’s a dead woman in love, who curses you.

〄

He woke up screaming from the top of his lungs, and the feeling of falling was getting stronger.  
Where had he fallen from?  
From bed.

He felt the blankets wrapped around his body, they held him tightly, and they weren’t covers, they were hands, and they tugged and hit him and forced him to the ground.  
Where had he fallen from?  
From heaven.  
No.  
From the bed.

And he started kicking, crawling to try to free himself. The floor was cold, and he was burning, someone set his apartment on fire, and the light was everywhere, and he was -  
Burning up.  
And it burns, burns, burns.  
And she was there because of course, she was there. She was always there.  
Stupid he who was always so surprised.  
But this time she was too close and maybe he had slept more than he wanted to do, had waited too long, relaxed too much and she was an inch away, and he could do nothing but scream.

And now he was drowning, gasping in a sea of liquid smoke, flames and his wings were burning again, and he saw the feathers incinerate and disappear into piles of ashes.  
His hands were bloody, and she laughed.

And from the walls began to flow black liquid, acid, blood, and on the ground, there was only sulfur and dirt.  
And the black liquid was flammable pitch, and the walls caught fire, and everything was red, black, yellow and white.  
And she laughed, laughed, laughed.

When he finally managed to extricate himself from the blankets, he stood up on trembling legs. She laughed through the mirror of his bedroom and for a moment - that one moment when he had managed to stop screaming and crying - his apartment was filled with a dreadful silence, only her laughter cut the air, and he didn't cry, he didn't scream.

Crowley was tired, tired.  
Tired.  
Tired.  
Tired.  
So damn tired.

So he went into the big hall where the fireplace was and took the poker. His eyes were empty and expressionless, he didn't know what he was doing. The only thing he wanted was for her to disappear, for her to just go to hell, this devilish woman who had been tormenting him for two hundred forty-nine years and who didn’t ever shut up.  
And he didn't know if it was better when she looked at him with disgust and cold indifference or when he talked and poured words on him that hurt like sharp knives.  
So he stood in the living room for what had seemed like hours, looking at his apartment as it filled with acid black smoke and flames.

He ignored it.  
He walked around the apartment dragging the heavy poker loosely and for an instant stopped in front of the mirror, and there was that one moment of calm, almost peace before everything went down the drain.

She laughs:  
_Well, that went down like a lead balloon._

And he grabbed the poker and began to destroy all the mirrors in the house, now with obsessive care, then with murderous madness, he threw his fury at the window, and shards of glass and fragments of mirror flew around him, scratched him and they cut his skin. Still, he didn't stop until everything he loved— few objects, a painting given to him by an old friend, a statue of an eagle, his beloved plants— had gone to He...well it was all destroyed.

The revelation hit him at the exact moment when he had begun to feel excruciating pain. A large glass fragment had stuck in his arm, shoulder, leg and the blood was pouring running down what remained of the plants he had loved so much.  
He looked around. The blood was slipping between the shards of glass, he realized that the whole floor was strewn with it observing his distorted image danced along with hers.

Maybe_, _ Crowley thought, that wasn’t the point. The point was that she is right: _I am a Demon.  
_There isn’t much sense in hiding behind an elegant apartment, a nice car, music, sunglasses and a human name.

_He was Crawly.  
_It always had been.  
He had only deluded himself that he could be something different — perhaps a good man — and he had the illusion of being able to obtain forgiveness and the love of an angel.  
He was Crawly.  
The Serpent of Eden.  
Crawly.  
And Crawly was evil, despicable, had killed two innocent people.  
__Crowley hated Crawly.

She and Crowley watched Crawly let go the poker, and the noise was the only thing that echoed through the apartment. A loud and dull noise that made him shiver, like the final ring of a bell. He went to the bathroom and took his old supplies, and Crowley watched him swallow as many pills as he could in one fell swoop, watched him stick a syringe in his arm and push, push, until a big black hole formed between his veins, he watched him his eyes dilated beyond belief, they turned red.  
And she and he became one, so close that he no longer understood where she started and where he ended up.

And he laughs:  
_ Okay, it's all right. _

And she says:  
_ Now you know what you have to do. _

And Crawly smiled—

〄

** London, England, 507 days after the Apocalypse that never was **

Crowley didn't know when he had managed to outrun Crawly.  
He had succeeded, however, doing what he did best: Running, running away, going faster and faster.  
He didn't care about the rain that lashed his body or the looks of the passers-by hidden under the black umbrellas. They would soon forget what they had seen, remembering only a vague sense of urgency, desperation, a vital commission to be made and the lack of time to do it.  
  
Crowley ran, ran, ran at breakneck speed, ran as if all Hell was on his heels.  
He ran like a desperate man runs when he feels death approaching.  
The sky was dark. Clouds laden with rain clashed, producing thunder and lightning as if the end of the world was waiting for him again.  
The end. Soon, very soon, She would have arrived.  
But Crowley was in a hurry and didn't care.

He ran until he came to a small apartment, in a neighbourhood that didn't fully recognize, but which he had already seen a couple of times.  
Rang the house bell three times. When the answer didn't arrive quickly enough, it rang and rang again.  
"Madam Tracy, how can I help you?" The woman's voice was a mixture of annoyance— probably because of the rude manner in which the demon had clung to the bell— and sugary. Another time, Crowley would have been annoyed, or he had laughed, usually depended on his mood. Now the tone didn't make him feel any emotion.  
"Madame Tracy! Yes, it's me, Crowley, please open up? I'm looking for Shadwell, it's urgent. Open, open, open..." he couldn’t stop talking, or jumping from one foot to the other, too much haste, too much rain, too much everything.  
_He_ was coming.  
And _She_ was following.

“Crowley? Love, what the…?”  
“Looking for Shadwell, is he at home? I need to talk to him. It's important. You open up. I need to talk to Shadwell. He has to give me something. Quickly, hurry up. C'mon. Quick. OpenOpenOpen”  
"Yes. Yes, of course. Come inside."  
Crowley arrived at the apartment in record time. Mostly because his long legs allowed him to be much faster — when they remembered how an ordinary person should run — and a little bit because he made the steps three at a time.

"Love, what's going on?" The woman asked, opening the door with a worried look. Her hair was red and curly as always, her makeup a little heavy and Crowley decided she was beautiful.  
_ Beautiful Madam Tracy. Wonderful Madam Tracy. Saint Madam Tracy. _

"Everything's fine. Everything's okay," he answered quickly. "Shadwell? I need him; he has to take something for me."  
"Honey, Shadwell has left but will be back in a few moments. How about if I make you a nice cup of tea in the meantime? Maybe I'll even give you some towels. You're croaking ..."  
"No, no. Everything is alright. There is no need." He replied, still with adrenaline and another hundred substances that flowed into his body "I just need Shadwell."  
"As you wish,“ she answered uncertainly. Crowley was about to add something else, but the noise of the door's apartment made them both jump.  
Crowley, who hadn't been able to sit still for a second since he arrived, winced, stretched his whole body toward the front door. When Shadwell finally came into the apartment, Crowley almost jumped on him.  
"What the hell?"  
“Shadwell!” Crowley screamed in the highest three-octave tone. "Madame Tracy, there's Shadwell!"  
"I see him,” the woman replied, raising an eyebrow.  
"Listen, honey, why don't you sit down for a moment? I can make you a cup of tea, something relaxing maybe, you seem rather agitated ..."

“No, no.” He answered, moving his arms like a maniac. "Shadwell, Shadwell, I need a favour. I can pay you very, very much. Tell me a price, and it will be yours. I can make you even richer than the bloody Queen. "  
"Honey ..." Madame Tracy commented that, as a good Englishwoman, she didn't take kindly to those who spoke badly about the beloved sovereign.  
"Sergeant, do you remember when I was planning a church robbery in the seventies?" Crowley asked, ignoring the woman and focusing all his attention on the old man.  
He took off his soggy coat and hat and looked at him in perplexity.  
"It was your father, wasn't it?"

"No, no. Shadwell, I am a demon, I don’t grow old, that was me." Crowley replied, putting his hand to his chest. His lucid gaze was deepening. "A fallen angel if you like. A rebel, a revolutionary, a damned, a repudiated ... it still depends on the points of view." He said trembling, he no longer seemed able to stop. "Honestly, how did you not understand that before? You saw me with black wings and all that. What did you think I was, an aardvark?"  
Maybe one day we will discuss his fixation with aardvarks, and why he believes that somehow he can be mistaken for this particular animal.  
But now isn’t the time to unpack that, as already said, he is in a rush.

Crawly and the woman were coming, he could hear them, but they kept looking at him like he was crazy.  
Well, he wasn't.  
He wasn't.

"But that's not the point," he continued. "You have to take something from me in a church. I need it right away. I can pay."  
"What?" Asked Shadwell, tired and stunned by the demon's confession.  
He felt slightly uncomfortable: if he was a demon ... should he have to exorcise him? But he had tried with that other, the Southern pansy, he hadn’t obtained significant effects, however, given that the angel had returned as he had left. Moreover, after more than a year, both he and Tracy had participated in several brunches with the two and, although he liked to admit it, they had both become fond of those strange men.

"I need you to run to the nearest church. I need holy water. I can't take it alone for ... personal reasons. You can do it for me, yes? "  
His gaze was that of a maniac, he stammered and stumbled over his own words, hissed, spoke at the speed of light.  
Shadwell winced. "Holy water?"  
"Yes, I confirm, I asked for holy water. Am I speaking another language?"  
"Here love, why don't you drink a cup of tea." Said Madam Tracy popping up behind him. She took his elbow, gently, made him sit at the table, and placed the cup in his hands.  
Madame Tracy was British after all, in situations of extreme difficulty she knew there was no better solution than a good cup of tea.

"I don't want your damn tea, woman!" Crowley thundered, knocking the cup to the floor and hitting over the table. His voice was so threatening, that every plant and window of the Appartement started to tremble, three of which cracked. Both humans flinched, frightened by the demon's wrath. "I want holy water. Now. Immediately.”  
"Hey!" Shadwell boomed, and Crowley took a step back. The demon seemed terrified, frightened beyond all means, trembling like a leaf in the middle of a typhoon.  
Madam Tracy, meanwhile, had disappeared into the next room.

He felt horrible. He didn't want to scare them.  
This was a mistake, he thought.  
_They are good people. They don't deserve this.  
__I'm an asshole, a bastard. I shouldn't have, maybe if I run fast enough, I can still take the water by myself._

Crowley put his hands to his hair, pulled hard, while his breath grew shorter and his eyes widened more and more. He began to walk around the room, and the sergeant looked at him without really knowing what to do.  
"Now calm down, boy," he said a little gruffly. The voice actually hid the sweet tone of a father. "Try to relax, tell us what's going on."  
"No, no, no," Crowley began to murmur, trying to talk through the waves of panic that were suffocating him. "Thisss isss all wrong. All wrong."

Then he stopped for a moment, and his eyes widened: "A missstake. Thisss wasss a missstake. But it doesssn’t matter. I can take it by myssself.” He realized. After all, had walked more than once along a church aisle. He didn't even need a container to take it away. He just had to dip his hands in the font and finish the job.  
He walked towards the door, but two strong hands blocked him. Sergeant Shadwell was holding him still, but his mind was clouded by the panic and fear, and he began to whimper without being able to escape from the iron grip. It didn’t matter he was a demon. It already happened that humans were able to pin him down against his will.  
"I need the water, pleassse, pleassse, pleasss—“  
He couldn't finish the sentence.

This for two reasons:  
the first is that when a large vase strikes something, it makes a terrible noise, almost as much as the sound of a body hitting the dark wood of a parquet.  
The second is that Madam Tracy, having returned from the next room, had taken the large porcelain vase, the one she used to hold wildflowers, and smashed it on the demon's head.

Sergeant Shadwell looked at her as if she were the Virgin Mary herself: that kind of look between the terrified and reverential astonishment. Madam Tracy looked at Crowley, lying on the floor, his slim body and his fiery red hair creating a strange contrast to the dark wood, with a look between bored and exasperated.  
_ At least _ , she thought,  _ now I can take my bloody cup of tea. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm a bit late, but I assure you that I have a good reason (I was procrastinating, don't be mad at me, I'm just a poor boy that should study or at least make my teachers believe so)
> 
> The next chapter is already a wip. I don't even have to tell you that there will be a lot of angst. Just to let you know, we will talk about very delicate issues in this story, and I want to remind everyone that, although everyone likes a good angst, I don't like to talk about these issues with lightness. I intend to make a profound analysis of the subject and to treat it with all the respect it deserves.  
But we will talk about this in the next chapter, otherwise, I have the feeling that I could not avoid spoilers.
> 
> Thanks for all your comments, I really love every single one you left ('Cause I'm a needy bitch and I need some comfort, this story is giving me anxiety ahah) and please, check it out this beautiful piece of[ art ](https://silveryartandstuff.tumblr.com/image/188257019793)made by [silveryartandstuff](https://silveryartandstuff.tumblr.com/)


	5. Interlude: The Great Emptiness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a dream and, at the same time, it isn't

_ “But dreams come through stone walls, light up dark rooms, or darken light ones, and their persons make their exits and their entrances as they please, and laugh at locksmiths.“  
— J. Sheridan Le Fanu, Carmilla _

〄

**Soho, London, England 1970**

_"You go too fast for me, Crowley."_

Technically, an angel should never hate.  
Theoretically, an angel is a being of love and compassion.  
Aziraphale, in those years, began to hate himself deeply.

The fact was this: you don't live in Soho for more than a century without immediately sniffing out the shadiest gossip. The rumours that someone was organising a robbery in a church came to his ears on a Saturday morning. Whispers and conjectures, nothing more, that had spread through his network of informants - at the time little more reliable than Sergeant Shadwell - and Aziraphale immediately understood that it was Crowley.

His first reaction was to get angry: _who knows what diabolical plans the demon was concocting right now._  
Then came the disappointment: _I have always been so stupid in believing that Crowley could change his nature._   
He was a demon, the opponent. It was stupid to hope that he could be different.

Finally, after having calmed down, and almost consumed the Persian rug by dint of going back and forth, he began to ponder what his enemy's gesture could mean. Trying to be honest with himself for a moment, he began to think about the last few times he had seen the demon.

Crowley, always too vigilant and scared.

Crowley, who stops to stare a point far away, his expression utterly terrified.

Crowley, looking at himself in the mirror as if he saw Satan himself.

Crowley, lying on a filthy mattress that calls him desperate and—

Crowley who asks him, begs him, to give him holy water.

_Oh,_ thought Aziraphale, _good God, I am indeed the most idiotic angel of Heaven. _

So here is what happened: Aziraphale had miraculously found his friend's Bentley and had slipped in, waiting calmly for him to get back in the car. He had passed a thermos filled to the brim with holy water and looked at it, seeing so much pain in his face that he felt trapped in the whirlwind of those emotions.  
And suddenly the thermos had changed colour. The small container was now covered with Tartan just like his tie.   
In the hope that, if his best friend ever decided to do anything stupid, he would stop at the sight of the thermos because maybe, if he had thought about him, he would have put aside those dark thoughts.

So when the demon said: _I'll give you a lift. Anywhere you want to go._  
He stopped for a moment and said: _You go too fast for me, Crowley._  
And there was no logic in this, really. It was an idiotic thing to say, he realised.

_The most idiotic angel of Heaven: Aziraphale._

And for three years he had remained silent in his bookshop, pushing away every customer who tried to buy his books in the rudest ways, reading and searching to understand what could be that scared his friend so much. But there was nothing that could torment a demon.

He found Crowley in the last place he thought he could go: in a nightclub. He didn't know why he had slipped into that carnage; the music was too loud, there were too many people. He sighed, lost amid loud, noisy music — God, how he hated those places.   
It took him an excessive amount of time to locate the demon.

〄

**Somewhere, someplace, everywhere and here: Time and space don't exist when music is so loud that you can't even hear your heartbeat.**

Crowley knew she wasn't a good dancer. She was a demon and, like all demons, she lacked grace. Her movements were awkward when she tried, too stiff and too fast.  
But she had always loved dancing. There was this sinful atmosphere in the clubs.   
She felt the same slightly during aristocracy's ball, in the courts, but in the nightclubs, no one tried to pretend. The bodies weren't rigid, embalmed in a thousand rules that she often forgot to follow. Everyone in the club was free, half-naked, sweaty. loose hair, short skirt, the smell of alcohol and smoke danced between them like a mystical presence.  
Neon lights lit up the room intermittently, and people seemed to appear and disappear constantly.  
They weren't real.

It was an old prostitute who taught him that trick.

Crowley's hair was so long that it grazed her hips, obscene and seductive. Her feminine and generous form was wrapped in dark lingerie, a short, semi-transparent black kimono with a snake drawn on the side, tied loosely to the waist that left nothing to the imagination.   
Someone, during the party, had written the word _"SIN!"_ On her stomach with lipstick and Crowley had laughed, amused by the irony.  
  
"Close your eyes and let it go." The prostitute had said, moved by the horrible way Crowley had to dance.   
"Move slowly, as if you were fucking with a Greek God. Slowly, as if the place, the world and time belonged to you.” She had said.   
"Ignore the music, ignore everyone. No one exists except you."

Crowley slipped and moved like a snake in the crowd of people, the neon lights that came and went, no one existed, only her, only her hair when she put her fingers between them, only her eyes when she opened them.   
She slipped and crawled. She moved in a sinuous, sinful, inviting way.  
Promising a night of profanities, sacrileges and passion.

Attractive as only dangerous things could be: like flames, like Hell, like a snake, like a delicious red apple that could be as poisonous as it's delicious.  
Her body was pure temptation.  
She said: take a bite. _Bite_. Devour.

The prostitute had said: _There are only two rules when you dance in a nightclub. The first is that there aren't rules. The second is that nothing is important._

_(Crowley often stopped to think about her. She had probably been the first human she had ever loved. Almost as much as she had loved Aziraphale. She was always sweet with her. She stroked her long red hair, whispered her kind words. She never judged her, fed her with pills and alcohol, she kissed her, if Crowley had ever had the experience of having a parent — more human-like than divine— she would have said she loved the old prostitute as a mother.  
__The woman had never had children and, in general, gave Crowley the worst advice, but she did the best she could. _A mother is like God_, she said — thin and sick for the AIDS and old age — _you grow up, they expect you to love her regardless of everything. When you decide to leave to live your life, you suddenly become Satan_. Crowley had laughed for the irony, and the woman had fallen into a deep sleep without ever awakening. Besides the little Warlock, Crowley suddenly realised that she wanted to be like her. So she told the little boy the same words one day, while the woman whispered viciously in her ear that she could never love someone like a son)_

While the demon proceeded with her strange dance, a group of men had started looking, interested. Corrupt and frightening look, they looked at her like a piece of meat. If only she would have been a little more lucid, perhaps she would have been disgusted.   
Crowley wasn't, and in any case, her body served for that purpose: to tempt and assure a bit of soul in hell.

It was a girl who approached her first. She overcame everyone in speed and courage, challenged the waves of people between them and grabbed her by the hips.   
_Fantastic humans, always so brave._

The girl had ebony skin, black and large eyes. The demon looked at her and thought of Eva, beautiful and fatally brave, extremely intelligent, intriguing.  
Crowley observed Eve - who wasn't Eve - while she took her by the arms and kissed her neck, breasts and shoulders. Her skin became paper in which she could write an erotic poem, full of similarities between her and the flowers that grew in her apartment.

Two men behind them started screaming some insult, but they didn't care. They began their dance until Crowley opened her eyes and saw it: the exact moment the girl realises that there is something deeply wrong with them, and she is smart enough to leave.  
Crowley remained in the crowd, looking at the exact spot where, a few moments ago, Eve-not-Eve had embraced her and suddenly felt alone.

But the golden rule of nightclubs is: _Nothing is important, not even your broken heart._

So when another young man approached, Crowley greeted him in her arms. She let herself graze possessively and be kissed violently.   
She is living the life she loves, she tells herself that she is relishing the life she is leading.  
She tells herself:_ I deserve this.  
_ _This is exactly what I wanted._

Because her heart was empty, her skin insensitive, and there was a huge snake crawling and tangling inside her.  
The man held her tight, made her lean against a wall, and if tears began to form in her eyes, no one cared.  
But then there was the pain: Wonderful, warm, divine. The most powerful drug. Crowley could no longer do without it, she was utterly addicted to it.

And she asks: _give me more, as long as it hurts so much that it doesn't hurt anymore._  
Again: _add a little lust._  
Again: _a pinch of malice.  
_ Again: _if you felt the need to run away from me, it means that your instinct works well._

Then the boy stopped. The red-haired girl had just the strength to open one eye. Behind them, a small man with blond hair and a blinding aura held the man's wrist in a steel grip.   
"Zira." Crowley commented, without sounding too surprised.  
"Excuse me," Aziraphale said in a harsh, firm tone, the one he used when he was angry. "I think my old friend needs to get some air. You understand, of course."   
"I ... um ... sure?" The man replied, stunned by the strength shown by the angel's soft appearance.   
"Perfect, you better go then." He encouraged him with a fake and forced smile. "And it would be better if I never see you take advantages of a girl at a vulnerable moment again, because otherwise _— _may God give me strength_— _ I swear I'll raise hell upon you."

_(The man, after that night, stopped going to the clubs. He found a good job and after a few years a girl who became his wife. Now the two have three children, and he is a good family man, one of those help their children with their homework, who listen to all their problems and try to help them as he can, who love his wife immensely. Together they take the children to church on Sunday mornings and then, in the afternoon, take long walks on the beach.)_

Aziraphale returned to focus on Crowley. She hadn't dared look at him, suddenly embarrassed by her behaviour. Nausea took over, and she brought a trembling hand to her mouth, disgusted with herself.   
"My dear, why do you do all this?"   
"What?" She asked.   
"All these drugs, drinking, girls and boys. Why?"

She laughed.

"You know it's not good for you."   
Crowley broke away from the wall. The movement caused her dreadful dizziness, and Aziraphale leaned towards to support her. Crowley immediately freed herself from his grip.   
"Look at me, angel." Crowley made a semi pirouette, spread her arms with a snort. "I was going to fuck that guy, but now I feel so deeply empty next to you." 

She laughed again.

"Look at me. I am alone, completely alone. Even hell has left me."  
Aziraphale noticed the tears that seemed to want to fall from the lashes loaded with the friend's mascara but didn't comment.  
"I am a ridiculous being," she commented as if it were a fact. 

Aziraphale approached her. Crowley had always been a beautiful man, but her female form was the apotheosis of carnal sin.   
Beautiful, inviting, mischievous, thin and slim, curly red hair that swayed against her long neck, the caramel-coloured skin, the breasts like champagne cups.   
Splendid, seductive, _divine_.   
Full lips, blood-red, to be devoured. Crowley seemed to have come out of a Pre-Raphaelite picture.   
Aziraphale swallowed.

"Look at me," she commanded. "I am a fallen angel. No one can ever love me."   
"My dear ... let's go home. I'll make you a good cup of tea.” Aziraphale took her arms and began to make his way among the people, protecting her from lascivious looks and unwanted touches as he felt the body next to him start to shake.

Crowley looked at him and wondered how was it possible that the angel might have been there for her.   
When you live in hell, you don't have much choice between fire and torture. The exact definition of a demon was to be forever in search of sin and pain.   
It was what it was. She couldn't change it.   
In hell, if you don't die from the beatings, the fire, the pain, the torture and the blood— and when she spoke of "dying" she didn't intend to _die_ in a human sense, she wished to have that luck, she meant differently.   
It was her spirit that was dying, not her body - what really kills you, are those days are all the same, monotonous, in which nothing new happens.  
Always the same routine.   
Cut, slice, kill.   
Paperwork on paperwork. 

But she had left that place, she had found a way to live on Earth where the sky was blue, and there were flowers.   
And there was Aziraphale. Always Aziraphale.

She knelt before him, as she had seen Mary Magdalene do in front of Jesus Christ, a gesture of pure adoration. And as she let herself go towards him, she took his palms, kissed them and the angel's face flushed with the gesture.   
Like blood or like an apple picked from a tree.   
And there was no trace of temptation in her movements, only unconditional love. She dropped kissing his feet, and Aziraphale lowered himself by bending his knees a little, took her face in his hands, moved her hair a little to see her better. With his thumb, he cleared the tears from his eyes.  
"What are you doing, my friend?" 

And Crowley would like to scream: _Love me, Love me, Love me, please love me. Because the world is a terrifying place and everyone dies, and I feel so alone, and I'm afraid that if one day I'll stop, this black hole inside my chest will consume me and I'll stop existing._

But instead, she said: "I'm going to die, angel."   
Aziraphale looked at her with a sweet smile and knelt beside her. "No, my dear."   
And Crowley added, "Love me, please. Just for a few minutes, pretend to be mine. Pretend you love me as much as I love you. One minute, one second. Please."   
Aziraphale looked at her, this beautiful creature who was Crowley; he wondered how this damn thing might have seemed the most sacred thing he had ever held in his hands.   
Sometimes he reminded her of his sword: sacred, flaming and lethal.   
"I can't, my beloved."

Crowley started crying and added: _Do you think it's my fault if humans are so cruel?_  
_Do you think it's my fault if they do nothing but kill each other? It's my fault? Is it really my fault?_  
"What's the point of all this?" Asked the other in an exasperated tone.  
"The point is ..." she replied, "I'll die soon. I broke all the mirrors in my apartment. It's like... ten billion years of jinx, angel."

And she explains: "There is this bitch, this dead wife, who does nothing but look at me constantly, and never leaves me alone."  
_Maybe I'm freaking out? Going insane?  
_ _I don't know, I don't know, I don't know._

Crowley trembled because it was cold and the feeling of cosmic emptiness was back as if someone had suddenly erased all the stars, the moon and the sun, as if in her chest there was a vast black hole that sucked up everything he could find.  
Aziraphale looked at her, ran a delicate round hand into her hair and said:  
_"I wish you woke up, my foolish serpent."_

〄

**In a nightmare, in the mind of a demon who dreams of taking a hot bath.**

Crowley woke up with a start.  
He was lying in his bathtub, red rose petals dangling on the clear water.  
Not even in the most beautiful and most abundant gardens in the world, there was a similar scent. Immersing in hot water, the perfume invaded utterly. It was like a symphony comparable to the solitary strumming of a violin. And it was even more. Crowley closed his eyes and felt that the most sublime memories awoke in him.

He went back to when he was in the Garden, the soft grass that tickled his stomach, Adam and Eve dancing slowly on the lawn.  
He returned back when the angel was always beside him, when there was nothing to be scared of. He returned to a rainy day with the sun and saw the contours of a bouquet of roses on the window sill, which swayed in the night breeze; he heard birds singing here and there and, from afar, the music of a gala dance.  
He heard a thick whisper in his ear and felt sensations never felt before.  
Oblivion; he was so relaxed that he would fall asleep again at any moment.   
He didn't care. 

The water was perfect, nothing was outstanding.  
For a moment he forgot the woman, the composer, the angel, heaven and hell, the war that had never been and all the rest.  
He forgot he was a demon, that he was immortal.  
He forgot his eyes, his wings, his name.  
It doesn't matter.  
I will think about it tomorrow.  
_ It doesn't matter. _

Slowly he felt himself slipping more and more into the water. He put his hand to his head to wet his hair a little.   
The water was thick, slightly viscous. It didn't bother Crowley, but it left a sticky feeling between his fingers. He pulled himself up a little, and something in the water touched him.   
  
Blood. He was immersed in a tank filled with thick and dark blood.   
When he realised, he gave a terrible cry as if he were burning alive. Pieces of two corpses began to emerge from the blood, and the dead wife's face watched him with a glazed look on his face, white eyes, a gaunt, hollow face, blond hair now a deep red and disgusting.   
The composer floated beside her and arms flew toward him, trying to grab him and drown him in that sea of blood and flesh.   
Numb, he could barely jump out of the tub.

If the cry hadn't torn the fog in his mind, he would have drowned in himself: an atrocious death.

The water was no longer clear and transparent, but an intense dark-red and with such a penetrating odour that it pushed away all his thoughts.  
The scent he felt until a few moments ago now made his head spin, and his legs were so wobbly that, trying to get up as quickly as possible, he fell to the ground.  
Blood was spilling out of the tub, like if it was boiling. From the floor, the only thing that could be seen was: red, red, red.  
The room, the bathroom, was completely shrouded in darkness and Crowley heard a voice that laughed maliciously.

He couldn't even think at that moment. He just wanted to run away from that place. He crawled a little towards the door, trying to get to his feet, but with every breath, he had violent dizziness.  
Every millimetre he made towards the corridor, the light grew stronger and blinded him.  
The smell of death and rotting bodies choked him, it was disgusting.

Dragging himself to the corridor, everything he saw was confusing; The ceiling merged with the floor, everything was melting and didn't even understand where he was going.   
_What should he do?_

When he reached the corridor, the lights started to go out one by one.  
For a moment, he thanked someone (don't care who) for that little clemency: the lights were blinding him _— _but it could also be the blood that covered him and ran from his forehead, blurring his vision. All he could see were only red and terrifying shadows_— _ soon after he realised that the lights were going out and the shape in front of him was a woman with a long black veil hiding her face.  
_Have mercy_, he thought, _kill me._

She wouldn't have done it, anyway.   
She would have eaten or tortured him until he was mad and then he would have left him there; in a corridor, naked and covered with blood and flaps of skin, crazy and alone.   
Crowley closed his eyes, leaning his head against the cold floor.   
Then he heard a voice: _Don't worry, my dear. I'm here with you. Everything is alright. Wake up, my love. Wake up and come back to me.   
_And the voice was light, wiping away darkness in the corridor, the woman flinched, and he sighed deeply.   
_Thanks._

〄

**Again, nowhere, time is relative, it's not important, it could be yesterday like today.**

The rain was hitting him so hard that his body seemed to succumb under the hail.  
"But they're drowning everybody else?" He had asked, and the angel had tightened his lips in a thin line, nodding.  
_What does it mean? Do you agree with me or are you telling me that you will do it anyway?_  
_I hate them, I hate you, that's why I fell_  
_Bastards, you're all bastards._  
And then it had become a sad and trembling lament.

"Not the kids. You can't kill kids."

The water now was at his hips, but he refused to give up: he helped a child and his sister a few years younger to come up to a tree. At least, a third of the others were already dead, drowned; he didn't know if there were more.   
There would be no commendations for this.  
The opposite, perhaps.

_Are you doing all this to repay your debts?_ Asked the dead bitch, with her fucking black veil covering her face, as she watched him looking for other survivors.   
_You know very well that it won't do any good. _  
_That's why you do it, right? _  
_Because you know you are destined to fail. _  
_You won't save anyone, but you try anyway. _  
_Is it to deceive that angel?   
_ _To induce him to believe that you are a good person? _

Small hands had emerged out of the water and started to pull him down, and the ground seemed to disappear beneath his feet: The children had no eyes and had an evil smile painted on their face, from under the water they looked like terrifying sirens.   
_Come with us._

And Crowley had tried, he had resisted as long as he could, but the water was black and deep, the rain too intense, choking him and burning.  
_Burn.  
_ _Burn._

He remembered a cheap liquor, and he knew he couldn't really die, he didn't even need to breathe, but the water was as thick as liquid mercury, it burned like lava, and in a moment of panic he realised: this is holy water.  
And she laughs.  
She doesn't seem to worry that she shouldn't be able to laugh underwater.  
And her clothes and hair float and wrap themselves around him, like a snake with its coils.  
He is afraid.

〄

**Everywhere and nowhere, every time and never.**

He woke up again.  
He didn't seem to do anything else in the last few days.  
He jumped from one nightmare to another constantly and wondered, in the fog of his shredded mind, how strong were those drugs he had swallowed the night before.  
Or the week before?  
Or was it already a month?  
However.

Now he was back in his apartment. The night air froze his bones, but it seemed a quiet evening, without a star in the sky. No moon. Only deep darkness.  
Around him, a million shards of glass surrounded him like toy soldiers armed with sharp blades.  
She was reflected in every fragment of the mirror, and he vaguely remembered that somewhere, breaking mirrors was a bad omen.  
The demon Crawly was in front of him. His gaze was curious as if he was expecting something from him.  
They were silent for a long time.

Imagine this: there are two demons, one facing the other.   
Both wear a black suit, have red hair and yellow eyes with vertical pupils.   
Both have a tattoo on the right cheek, the snake's mark.  
Both have black wings spread behind them.  
_Can you spot the difference between the two?_

Among them is a woman. The woman is wearing a long black dress, a black veil, black gloves and has no eyes; only two dark abysses with red borders, like a fire that is about to go out.  
The woman has an apple in her hands, that's looks succulent.

The demon Crawly stepped forward and the demon Crowley backwards.  
The woman looked at them in silence.  
_Can you tell the difference?_

One of them realised he had a long splinter of the mirror in his right hand, sharp as a knife. He looked at it curiously.  
The other realised he had his exact copy in his left hand.  
_Can you tell the difference?_

The demon laughed.  
She laughed.  
The other looked at them without smiling.

She says: _Kill him._

He says: _If I kill him, will you go away?_

She says: _I'm part of you._

He says: _If I kill him, do you promise that you won't hurt the angel?_

She says: _If you kill him, I will disappear._

He says: _All right.  
_

His hand was around the throat of the other in a slight movement, the long sliver glass stuck between the ribs and the other falls;  
dead.

Imagine this:  
There are two demons in an empty dark room.  
The emptiness is not really an empty place, it's the demon soul.  
And yes, technically it isn't really empty if there are three people in it, but you understand what I mean.  
The vacuum is black and scary.  
You could also call it the Great Emptiness. The cosmic void.   
Three beings throughout the universe.  
However.

There are two demons in a room — which-is-not-a-room— empty.  
One is lying on the ground, covered in blood, dead.  
The other is standing, a long sliver of glass slips from his fingers, falls and shatters.  
_Would you know who is who?_

Meanwhile, you decide, one of them woke up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Little Spoiler: You'll hate me a lot in the next few chapters.
> 
> Cyanidechan made me a fantastic illustration that is outstanding, you can see it_[here](https://cyanidechan.tumblr.com/post/188668995441/ive-finally-finished-my-poster-for)_


	6. Strange Premonitions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We left Crowley that, after destroying his apartment, went in search of holy water from Madame Tracy and Sergeant Shadwell.  
Meanwhile, Aziraphale remains in the dark about what is happening.  
At least, until now.

** Soho, London, England, 507 days after the Apocalypse that never was, a quarter before Crowley arrived at Madame Tracy's door. **

"Oh, balderdash! There is nothing to worry about!" Aziraphale grumbled after losing the sign of the book he was reading for the twelfth time.  
Oh, but he’d always been good at worrying. He was an excellent worrier.  
That was his ‘thing’, as Crowley said.  
Aziraphale, the worrier. Angel of Anxiety.

After a week, he had still not been able to calm down. Technically he had spent centuries without meeting Crowley, but after the whole apocalypse's débâcle, they found themselves increasingly wandering around each other.  
  
Aziraphale wasn't stupid, although he sometimes doubted it. He wasn't blind enough to be fooled by the demon's uncaring and falsely relaxed attitudes. He had seen too much in the last few centuries to don't notice that there was something deeply wrong with his oldest friend.  
Usually, he hid behind the excuse:_ Crowley is a demon. It is normal to seduce human beings, to have fun drinking too much and trying too many drugs._

Aziraphale was essentially a liar. He was lying to himself the entire time. Because there was nothing seductive about the way humans touched the demon's body. There was nothing funny about the way he was when he drank. There was nothing evil in the way he always seemed so deeply frightened.  
Sometimes it was as if he could see in Crowley's soul, a deep tear, a wound that never seemed to shrink, that never seemed to close.

And there were things he sometimes said, little phrases, which even made him doubt that Crowley was a demon: there had been that time when he had tried to protect children during the flood and failed miserably.  
The way he had found him when all the water was gone.  
The way he looked around, the corpses of children lying on the still-damp ground, with those eyes wide open, tears sliding down and falling on the wet sand. The way he started calling them by name, one by one.

And Aziraphale had asked: _Why do you do it? They are dead.  
_And Crowley had turned and looked at him as if he had said the worst of all blasphemies.  
Crowley's look, so distraught: _Dead, dead._  
He had repeated it until it had become a soft murmur, until he had stopped turning around the children and had sat down beside them, hands and head sunk in his knees.  
(The sight of his enemy in those conditions had caused Aziraphale a particular pang of pain in his chest.)

There had been that time when he got spectacularly drunk without ever recovering for a whole week. And then he let himself be tortured with the hangover of the century, just because he had discovered what the Spanish Inquisition was.  
Aziraphale had found him the next day in his apartment. After asking around, worried about the disappeared.  
A girl who worked as a bartender in a small tavern—because obviously, Aziraphale had first searched in every inn in the city—had indicated a sumptuous apartment and told him: "We had to send him away, the poor soul. He had been here for a week and looked half dead."

Aziraphale had found him curled upon himself, in the corner of his bedroom. Feverish and sweaty, entirely out of his mind.  
"I'd discovered that despite everything that's happened, I still had an endless untapped potential for getting hurt." had said Crowley, laughing sadly. Aziraphale understood immediately, he wasn't referring only to the inquisition, but to the Fall from Heaven too.

"I'm just so disappointed, so tired of them." He murmured.  
"_Do you think it's my fault humans are so cruel? Do you think it's my fault if they do nothing but kill each other? It's my fault? Is it really my fault?_” And he had started crying, and Aziraphale couldn't help but rock him in his arms.  
He was an angel after all. To console who suffering was in is job description.

There were times, nights, when Crowley showed up in his shop, half-naked or with torn clothes and his eyes so lost and scared that they left him breathless. On those occasions, the fallen angel never spoke, didn't make a sound.  
(The first time it happened, Aziraphale had asked him at least a million questions, all unanswered. Not knowing if that was done by demons, angels or simple humans.)

On those nights, Crowley always seemed to be consumed.  
At his mercy.  
He could have done anything to him, and the demon wouldn't have moved a finger to stop him.  
But Aziraphale, the foolish angel he was, took him in his arms, accompanied him up the stairs to his bedroom. Gently, he helped him to undress, he washed away his makeup, the dirt, made him wear a soft robe because sometimes his naked body was scary. There were too many marks and scars, too many cuts and bruises.  
He seemed too fragile.

So he took him in his arms and waited for the demon to calm down, even when his eyes were empty and distant, when he didn't seem to see him, when he looked at a distant point in the room, Aziraphale could feel that he was next to him and this was enough.

The next morning Crowley disappeared.  
He always managed to slip out when the angel left the room.  
Whenever he saw him, after those nights, Crowley seemed to be okay, and Aziraphale often wondered if he had imagined it.

There was a certain kindness in Crowley, it was just hard to point out.  
He could see him when he was surrounded by children, especially.  
Going back when both were working for the Dowling family, the demon was the one who always gave the worst advice to the child. And yet, there were those times when the little Warlock cried, and she held him tightly, hugged him, or those moments when Crowley, sure that no one could see her, sat next to the child, sang sweet lullabies with that gentle, loving tone, she kissed his forehead when she thought the baby was already asleep.

He could see the kindness in his eyes when he looked at him, when Aziraphale said something a bit rude, a sarcastic comment, and Crowley smiled as if he had just turned on a light in a very dark room and—  
_Oh._  
_How stupid._  
Aziraphale: _ The most stupid angel of heaven. _

〄

** Mayfair, London, England, 508 days after the Apocalypse that never was **

Aziraphale had searched him, of course.  
He had appeared Crowley's apartment door and had knocked over and over again, but no one had answered him. But he was still worried: Crowley always tended to be late for their appointments —_stylishly late,_ the demon's voice corrected him in his mind— but he had never missed one without warning first.

This time, though, he hadn't shown up, and that unpleasant feeling hadn't let him go. So he had ventured into the apartment, usually neat and immaculate, where a typhoon seemed to have passed. The air was cold, the windows scattered throughout the flat, the plants destroyed. Aziraphale felt a shiver run down his spine.  
"Where the hell are you, foolish serpent?"

〄

** Soho, London, England, 508 days after the Apocalypse that never was **

He still couldn't calm down. Aziraphale had searched everywhere, in e bars he knew, in all their secret places, in the slums of the city.  
  
The ringing of a telephone;

Then a thought caught him off guard: _What if a demon attacked him? If Heaven and Hell had figured out their body-swapping trick? If Crowley had been captured, Aziraphale wasn't sure he could save him. _

Another ring;

_ What if he died? Crowley had behaved so strange lately, he always seemed exhausted and sick, and what if something happened to him? _

Another ring;

Aziraphale looked at the phone with a disapproving look, trying to ignore it. The frightened thing had immediately stopped ringing. A few moments later, he took courage and rang again.  
(It was an old phone, very experienced and had a single job to do: Ring. It wouldn't have been a hedonistic bibliophile angel to keep him from doing his bloody job.)  
_If it is another customer, I swear on the almighty I'm gonna snap._

"I'm sorry to inform you that we are quite clos—"  
"Mr Fell??"  
The voice on the receiver's other side was apprehensive and out of breath, as if she had run to the phone and called him without really thinking about what to say. He could hear the urgency in her voice, the rush to deliver an important message.  
"Madame Tracy?"  
The woman had babbled, explaining what was happening, and the angel had felt his anxiety gradually growing with every woman's word. Then the fear turned to panic, then terror.

"Madame Tracy, it doesn't matter how you do it, but you have to stop him." said feeling the dread increasing "No matter how... he doesn't have to take the holy water at any cost!" He was trying to keep a calm tone but failing miserably "It would kill him, it would _destroy_ him. Try to make him calm down, knock him off if you have to, I don't care. I'm coming."

〄

Aziraphale didn't remember the last time he had run so fast. For a moment he wondered if it was better to extend his wings and fly to the flat but decided against it: if Crowley was so desperate to ask for holy water, he was probably in danger. Perhaps, Aziraphale reasoned, he would have to fight.  
Anyway, the apartment wasn't far.

When he arrived, he was greeted by Madame Tracy and Sergeant Shadwell, the first sitting at his tea table while sipping from a cup, the other was pacing around the room.  
"Where is he?" Aziraphale asked in alarm, noting that Crowley wasn't there and the room seemed too quiet. "In the guest room, love." she sighed.

Aziraphale approached slowly.  
Madame Tracy's bedroom was a horrible bright pink. On the floor and furniture, there were stuffed animals of every shape and size, objects for pleasure, perfumes and make-up. All pink.  
(Aziraphale found a moment to raise an eyebrow, silently judging the woman's tastes on the interior.)  
Then his attention was caught by the sleeping demon lying on the bed, bounded to the headboard with a pair of handcuffs covered with a pink fur.  
Crowley's body was covered with deep cuts and bruises, some of which had been medicated by the woman.

"He was bleeding," she explained. "It seemed pretty serious but, well ... we didn't know how safe it was to call an ambulance."  
He ignored her. Another time he would have apologized for the trouble, he would have thanked them for helping Crowley, for stopping him.  
But he didn't have time, he needed to make sure he was okay.

Madame Tracy needed neither excuses nor thanks. She hastened to pull away from the door Shadwell, who was looking at the angel with a dull expression on his face and, with a gentle tone, said:  
"I'll make you a good cup of tea, dear."  
Aziraphale muttered a "Thank You" and returned to concentrating on the demon.

Crowley resembled a corpse that had just remembered that he was still a little bit alive and had crawled out of his grave. The skin that once was a warm amber colour was now white and faded, sick.  
Gray, almost transparent.  
The eyes were closed, and the long eyelashes rested on deep circles and violet halos.

_ Why didn't you come to me, you stupid snake? _ He screamed in his head.  
_ You always come to me. _

〄

Crowley had turned and turned over in bed.  
Or rather, he had tried despite the handcuffs that forced him to a supine position. His eyes moved frantically under his eyelids, murmuring senseless things, and sometimes he would cry.  
Aziraphale had tried to wake him up, he had tried to drive away from the nightmares in every way, but he had only gotten brief moments of tranquillity between one dream and another. He had tried to shake him, touch him gently, trying to calm him down, but every touch seemed to produce only other tears and suffering sighs.

It had been a difficult night for everyone. Madame Tracy had given him her guest room, the pink one with the stuffed animals, and she had slept in her room. Reassuring the angel that no, it wasn't trouble and yes, she understood the situation, and they were welcome to stay for as long as they needed.

Shadwell, on the other hand, had slept on the sofa in the living room. He claimed that he would never leave the woman at the mercy of two devils, (it seemed impossible to make him understand that Aziraphale was, in fact, an angel and by definition, the opposite of a demon) but he was actually worried about the red-haired boy as much as Tracy.

Aziraphale had smiled for that kindness. He had always been a loner and rarely mingled with humans until he came to call them friends,—With some exceptions as in the case of his barber, Oscar Wilde, the first owner of the Ritz and the girl who first invented crêpes—humans were too fragile, and their lives were too short. Aziraphale loved to walk among them, he enjoyed all the aspects and all the different personalities of each of them. The angel admired the fact that they were as good as wicked, their way to always created new traditions and new ways of enjoying the small pleasures, the hasty and confusing way they lived.

He always remained a little apart, in a middle line, he was never brave enough to love them to the end. Whenever he got too close, he always ended painfully.  
Their lives were short, they bloomed and faded in the blink of an eye.  
Aziraphale never grew old, he never died, and he was always burned by the pain that every goodbye caused.

_ (He didn't want to admit it to himself but those deaths were nothing compared to the idea of losing Crowley. His rescue anchor, his fixed point in the universe, the only person he could really talk to, who was always with him from the beginning of time. The idea of having to face the world alone terrified him. Above all—he had realized this at the same moment when he had touched the hand of the demon who handed him a bag full of books in the middle of what was once a church—Crowley was a fire that had lit up in his heart. It burned, bright and warm, with strength and, often, in a painful way. But the heat of those flames warmed his being, and Aziraphale knew he would freeze to death if that fire would have died out.) _

Aziraphale thought, roughly towards the third cup of tea, that those humans who orbited around them were the first who knew what they were and had accepted them. He couldn't suppress another smile.  
_ Crowley, _he thought, _when they will leave us it will be terribly painful, but I think it will have been worth it. _

〄

** Madame Tracy's guestroom, London, England, 508 days after the Apocalypse that never was. **

Aziraphale was at his fifth cup of tea when the demon, with a painful moan, woke up. His eyes were bright, and his skin was sweaty, white as a ghost and weakened by fever. He murmured something incomprehensible, and the angel started at that noise, afraid that the demon wasn't really awake, but he was having another nightmare.  
  
"Crowley, can you hear me?" He whispered softly, trying not to scare the demon too much. He replied with a series of indistinct consonants and vowels, not a real answer.  
Then a hiss: "Zira?"  
It was painful to see him in that state, yet he had seen the same pattern too many times before.  
"Crowley?"  
"Where... how...?" He tried to ask, but his brain didn't seem able to formulate concrete thoughts, still too foggy, like a computer struggling to get the connection.

"I tried to eliminate all the substances you took, Crowley." Aziraphale looked at him for a moment, gave him a stare full of resentment because he didn't want to see his oldest friend in those conditions, not again at least.  
"You've gone too far, once again, I can't do miracles on you anymore."

Crowley, on the other hand, didn't seem to understand where he was. He began to move in a frenetically, trying to free himself with the desperation of a condemned to death.  
Aziraphale understood immediately: with a quick wave of his hand, the handcuffs were gone and the demon curled upon himself. He put his arm over his head and one around his stomach, his forehead against his knees. The instinctive position of those who try in every way to protect themselves from an imminent attack that they know it can't be avoided.  
Aziraphale felt his heart sink and had to fight tears that started to form at the corners of his eyes.

"Crowley, do you understand what I'm saying?" The other asked. Just hearing the sound of his voice, the other began to cry like a desperate child. Seeing him like this, the angel wondered if this was why Crowley was always so good with children.  
Was that why it was too painful for him to hear them cry? Because they reminded him of his own suffering?

"No, my dear, please do not cry..." he tried to calm him with the most reassuring tone he could use "why didn't you come to me? You always come to me."  
"Why do you want the holy water? What's going on, Crowley?"  
"Zira..." he sighed, moving his shaking arm from his face. "Zira, please, please..."  
"At least explain to me what's going on."  
"Please, please..."  
Aziraphale closed his eyes for a moment. He wasn't sure he could do it.  
"If even the entire Pandemonium were chasing you, I would fight by your side, you know. But I need to understand what's going on."  
Crowley looked at him for a long, interminable moment.

Aziraphale thought back to that time when the demon had asked him_ 'do you know what eternity is?'_ And he would have liked to answer him that it seemed such an ephemeral moment, compared to that handful of seconds passed to be reflected in those impossible serpent eyes encrusted with tears and terror.  
But Crowley did something impossible: he extricated himself between the pink covers, ran a hand over his face, and began to speak in a hoarse voice, an interminable babble, disconnected phrases chasing one after the other, he told him everything.  
The truth, only the truth, nothing but the truth:  
  
_It had to be an easy-peasy temptation, he said it would be simple.  
__She doesn't understand, I didn't want to, I didn't know, but now she cursed me.  
__I'm cursed, angel, damned.  
__Now I see her everywhere.  
__She wants to kill me._

He was crying, crying, crying.  
And then he continued even more delirious, meaningless sentences.

_The children in Mesopotamia continue to drag me down, and I don't know how to save them, I've never once got too help them.  
_ _I set my apartment on fire.  
_ _I broke all the mirrors.  
_ _I lied to you... so many, many times._

_ She is a monster, a ghost, I tried everything but her... _

_I fell and became a demon.  
__Tempted so many men.  
_ _I asked too many questions.  
_ _Her blood on my hands, no matter how many times I wash it away, it's always there._

_I killed my plants.  
_ _All dead, none excluded._

_I tempted Eve with the apple.  
_ _I condemned all humanity._

Crowley cries and is desperate, he prays: _Please kill me, kill me, kill me before he does, I can't stand him to do it, I can't if I know the next thing he'll do is to kill you.  
_ He says: _I can't take it anymore, finish me, destroy me. I am a disgusting, dirty, vile, evil being.  
_ He says: _I don't understand where _he_ ends__ and where _ I _ start.  
_He says: _I destroy all which is beautiful in this world._

It wasn't just what he said, the angel thought. What had frightened him more than anything was his tone, that delicate and hurried whisper. The pain in his eyes. Crowley spoke like a sinner seeking forgiveness, like a condemned who confesses all his sins and prepares to receive extreme unction.  
"Stop, stop, just stop please." Aziraphale cried horrified. "Enough with this, my dear, stop saying these things." He wiped the tears from his face, kissed his cheek, his forehead. Crowley let him do it, didn't move, as if he had just turned to stone.

"We'll fix everything, Crowley." He whispered, trying to sound as reassuring as possible. "But I don't understand what's going on, what does it mean that a ghost wants to kill you? You know that ghosts don't— "  
"No, no. Everything's wrong."  
"It doesn't matter, we'll get an idea. I can protect you but you can't—"  
"It's a mistake."  
"Listen, listen. Give me some time, come and stay with me, I need to understand what's going on, we'll find a solution and—"  
  
"It's all wrong." Crowley sighed once again. Aziraphale stopped talking and sat on the bed to listen to what the demon had to say.  
"What does is _wrong_, my dear?"  
"My name."  
"Your name?"  
"Crowley... that isn't my name."  
Aziraphale watched him move, frowning. "What?"  
Crowley began to laugh like a maniac, and the small window in the room started to shake.  
"Crowley, it's not my name." There was a gaze in him, something he hadn't seen for six millennia. The eyes were completely yellow, the thin pupils dilated to an incredible extent.

"Crowley is not my name, not anymore. It never has been. Crawly, _Crawly_, don't you understand?"  
"What are you saying?"  
"She said I would hurt you. She is always right. She knows everything. Now my name is Crawly...and Crawly is a demon. You can't trust a demon. You have to kill us. Now."

He laughed again, so loudly that his body moved in spasms and suddenly the laughter turned into tears and sobs. He was swaying back and forth, and Aziraphale clasped his hands around his shoulders. The demon opened his mouth to say something more, but he didn't utter a word: his eyes opened and closed, his head lolled from side to side, Aziraphale felt a constant flicker under his hands and, in general, seemed exhausted.

"Your name is Crowley. You chose this name. Anthony J. Crowley. Even if you've never told me what the J stands for, this is your name, and I refuse to call you another way."  
Crowley was about to add something else—or maybe he was just moving his mouth without making a sound, he couldn't understand it— but he was interrupted by a shy knock on the door. The noise, though delicate, made them both jump.  
"You won't hurt me, Crowley. But you have to explain to me what's going on. Who is she?"

"Mr Fell ..." 

"Madame Tracy, please forgive me but this really isn't a good moment..."  
The woman poked her head in the room. The angel felt a little guilty, that was her home.  
"I know, love. But is Anathema and it seems to be rather urgent."

Aziraphale looked at Crowley for a moment: the demon nodded slowly and closed his eyes, slipping back into the bed in the previous position. The angel stood up, giving him his back, wiping away a single tear that had dared to slide down his cheek.  
"I'll be back in a second, Crowley." He murmured against the sweaty forehead of the demon who seemed ready to fall asleep again, his eyes closing as he tried to fight the desire to let himself go as best he could.  
"Rest now." The angel encouraged him.  
The next moment, the door closed and Crowley remained alone in the darkness.

〄

"Anathema, my dear girl, please forgive me, but this is the worst of all moments, can I call you later?" He tried to ask.  
Madame Tracy had prepared the sixth cup of tea, and for the first time in his long life, the angel felt a sense of nausea at the smell. He refused the cup the woman handed him with an elegant and gentle gesture of his hand, thanking her with a sad smile.  
"No, listen to Aziraphale ... it's _essential_."  
"Did something happen?" He asked, worriedly.  
"Crowley... is Crowley all right?"  
He stood for a moment in silence, struggling to tell the truth or not.  
"No." he finally sighed because he had always tried not to break the tenth commandment, even if with poor results.  
"Listen, I know it may seem impossible... even if it's with you that I'm talking so I'm pretty positive that you can actually believe me..."  
"What is it?"

"I've been months that I have dreams. Premonitions. They haven't been wrong once, but they aren't very clear... they are like confused dreams... but last night I dreamed about Crowley and he was suffering so much that I needed to know if he was all right..."  
Aziraphale looked at the receiver as if it could catch fire from one moment to another. An ice-cold chill creeping up my spine like spiders forming a web.

"If he is with you, you must keep him safe." The girl concluded.  
Aziraphale cast a strange glance at the door of the room where the demon rested. There was something different as if the house had suddenly become quieter, colder. He felt a sensation that he couldn't describe, as something missing, something dangerous, something sad. The door seemed suddenly threatening. "Wait a minute, darling" he murmured.  
With a handful of decisive steps, he approached the door and opened it, discovering that the room was empty.

〄

** Madame Tracy's guestroom, London, England, 508 days after the Apocalypse that never was, a few minutes after the phone rang. **

A voice says: _Are you ready?  
_Crowley replies: _Yes._  
The voice is a woman. A long black veil on her face. Nothing is different, always the same for three hundred years.

He explains: _I just needed him to know. I couldn't leave it without saying anything.  
_ He says: _He is my best friend. _

She says: _He seems a good person.  
_ _ Unlike you. _

In the dark, another figure approached: _He protected me with one of his wings from the rain on the wall of Eden.  
_ _ Don't hurt him. _

She nods.  
Crawly kisses the demon's temples, and it would seem a loving gesture if his touch didn't burn like holy water.

Three people in a room. Nothing changes. Always the same.  
The room is filled with objects and trinkets, but for the three of them, it's just a floor and a bed, two demons and a woman.  
The room is empty because Crowley is empty.

She says: _Here we go.  
_ He says: _This is the day we get free. _


	7. Ouroboros

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which there's a lover's farewell

A voice whispers: What type of man crawls into is own grave in search of hope?  
Another answer: A desperate one.

〄

**Madame Tracy apartment, London, England, 509 days after the Apocalypse that never was, a few minutes after the phone rang.**

"Fuck, shit, damn, damn, fuck, fuck, fuck."  
Aziraphale went back to the phone, muttering in a low voice, and Madame Tracy looked at him as if she had to decide whether to go and find another vase.  
"Anathema, where are you now?" He asked, picking up the receiver again.  
"In my cottage in Tadfield," the girl replied. "What's going on? Something happened to—"  
"There is no time," the angel interrupts, "I will be there in a matter of seconds."

Aziraphale put the phone down and started pacing around the room.  
"What do I do, what do I do?!" He began to murmur.“Okay, okay. Maybe I have an idea. Madame Tracy, I apologise for the floor."  
"The floor?" The astonished woman asked.  
He didn't answer.  
With a snap of his fingers, a circle appeared on the wooden planks with complicated symbols in it.  
"Okay, Madame Tracy, this is extremely important." The angel said as he entered the circle. "When I'm gone, you must clear the circle. Don't touch it!" The angel added hastily. He didn't know what would happen to a human within it. 

"Just delete a line, and it will turn off—it's drawn with simple chalk—pour water over maybe, and it should being harmless again." Aziraphale made a gesture, and the woman immediately understood: she walked away quickly from the circle, next to Shadwell who had the look of someone who had already seen a similar scene and wasn't happy to see it again. The angel sighed profoundly, a pair of majestic wings manifested behind his back, a bright light appeared and in a second disappeared from the apartment.

"Since when demons have white wings?" Shadwell asked without taking his eyes off the circle.  
Madame Tracy only raised her eyes to the ceiling without saying a word: she took the cup of tea from the table and threw its contents against the circle that immediately stopped shining.  
"I need some tea." It was the only thing the woman said, going into the kitchen and hoping that the two men would be alright.

〄

**Jasmine cottage, Tadfield, England, 509 days after the Apocalypse that never was, exactly four minutes after Aziraphale put the phone down.**

Anathema, to put it bluntly, screamed in fright.  
She wasn't ashamed. When Aziraphale had told her that in a few minutes, he would arrive, she had somehow expected to see him glide in his garden or to find him at the front door. She wouldn't imagine him appear in her living room, as he fell to one knee while with his enormous wings made everything falling from the coffee table.  
The angel looked horrible. Red face and trembling hands, he looked around and became even redder at the sight of the books scattered on the ground. His wings immediately curled up against his back and disappeared.  
"Ah, ehm, sorry for the mess. I'm a little rusty with these old things. I usually prefer to take the bus or have Crowley accompany me with the Bentley.” He said, trying to get up. The angel staggered a little, but he got back on his feet without too much trouble. 

"Oh," she murmured. "I thought you'd come flying or things like that."  
"Yes, well, I would have taken too long!"  
Newt had appeared from the next room still in his pyjamas, and Aziraphale blushed for the third time in realising that it must have been very early in the morning. He nodded to the boy, focusing again on the girl seated on the sofa. She puts her face in her hands.

"Aziraphale, I-I saw Crowley. I don't think he's okay..."  
He trembled at those words. _No,_ he told himself, _indeed not okay._  
"My dear, I really need your help. Yesterday Crowley went to Tracy and Shadwell asking for holy water."  
She startled at those words, and the angel added quickly: “They managed to stop him. When I arrived, he was delirious. Lately, he has this ugly habit of taking too many drugs and— and I don't know how to stop him. Or, at least, how to help him. He started saying meaningless things, and now he's disappeared and I—"  
"Disappeared?!"  
"Oh, please Anathema. Tell me, you know where he is."

She looked at him with tears in her eyes, shaking her head sadly. Aziraphale rubbed his eyes in despair.  
"Okay," he said, trying to be as reassuring as possible. He put all his fears aside because Crowley needed him and wasn't panicking that would help him. "Tell me about your dream, dear."  
"I'm sorry, it's all so confusing..." the girl murmured, looking at her hands.  
"It doesn't matter, tell me what you could see." He said, sitting next to her and putting his arm around her shoulders. "For example, maybe do you remember where he is?"  
"I think he's in a church," she said, after taking a moment to sort out her ideas. "A church… not too big or too small. There are a lot of statues of saints, things like that…”

"Okay." He encouraged her even though the thought of Crowley in a church wasn’t reassuring at all.  
"He's talking to someone. Seems afraid."  
"All right."  
"And his wings... I can see his wings; they're black...bl-bloodstained. There are feathers scattered everywhere..."  
Aziraphale's heart started beating wildly.  
"God, Aziraphale there's so much blood..." she said with a frightened sharp breath. 

"This church you see... can you see it clearly in your dream?"  
"Yes." she answered after a moment of uncertainty, "I'm not sure if I can describe it well, but maybe I can try to make some sketches?"  
"It won't be necessary." The angel said, taking her hands. The girl noticed he was trembling as if he was trying to maintain his calm.

"Anathema I must ask you to have faith in me, to help me. I can't lose Crowley..."  
"Aziraphale, you helped us save the world. You are my friends... mine and Newts. I love Crowley and you too. We’ll do anything to help you."  
Next to her, Newt nodded with a sweet smile, putting a hand on the angel's shoulder. Aziraphale found himself again thinking, smiling in turn, how wonderful was this feeling of community and brotherhood that made Heaven's love seem so cold and sterile.

With a snap of fingers, they were back in the middle of the living room. A circle with mystic symbols around them glowed.  
Aziraphale found himself saying the same words to Newt that an hour earlier had told Tracy: "Do not touch the circle, pour water over it until the light goes out, be careful."  
Then he put his fingers around the temples of the girl who looked at him with a confident smile: _Think back to the church, draw it in your mind. All the details you can grasp, you don't have to tell me, you just have to remember them._

"When you're ready, only nod, and we'll be there. I'm so sorry to drag you into this situation, my dear." He sighed. "If there was only one other solution..."  
"Aziraphale, that's enough. I already said it's okay. Now shut up, so I can concentrate." Despite the girl's harsh words, the angel did nothing but smile. He loved her bravery.  
She was always sure of herself, kind, always ready to help. Aziraphale fought the fear of losing Crowley. It wasn't what the demon needed. He closed his eyes and concentrated on reading the witch's mind. Anathema gave a slight nod, and the two disappeared in a beam of light.

〄

**Church of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, Padua, Italy, 509 days after the Apocalypse that never was. An hour before Aziraphale and Anathema disappeared from the Jasmine cottage.**

When he entered the church, the demon and the woman were already there waiting for him.  
Crowley looked at Crawly: neither of them reacted to the effect that the consecrated ground usually had to demons. He approached the altar, his hands along his body, ignoring the tremor that radiated throughout his being.

The church is empty and is not empty at the same time, etcetera, etcetera.  
You already know this.

The woman is holding something.  
We'll talk about it later.  
It's not important.  
None of them is: nobody cares.

It is the secret to surviving this world: nothing matters because if it mattered, it would mean that it also has power over us. The secret is that no matter how carefully you hide and push your feelings and fears. Eventually, they will re-emerge and drag you down, to the bottom, they will envelop your ankles, and you will find nothing to hold onto.  
At the first sign of weakness, you are out. Dead.  
Crowley knows this well. He's a demon. He knows that every action must be carefully calculated in function of showing no weakness.  
(Crowley also knows he isn't a good demon. Honestly, it is terrible in his work.)  
But it's not important.  
It is no longer.

Then he comes closer.  
The Demon Crawly is right in front of him, the altar at his back. He speaks as Lucifer spoke immediately after the fall, like those voice-over of an announcement's public service or like a fanatic who tries to make you adhere to his religion.

With this, I mean that he speaks monotonously, raving about meaningless things as if he were reading from a preprinted sheet with fake smiles and fake knowledge.

Crawly looks at him with a grim expression on his face: _We are the children of the night._  
Crowley hates him but can't say he's wrong. He is a demon, nothing else. His eyes betray him and start to cry.  
Around him, the statues seem to react in the presence of demons, of pure evil, and tears of blood begin to slip from white marble's eyes.  
The church now is dark, cold, red, white and black.

Crawly says: _We are the denizens of the dark, cloaked in blackest shadow,_  
He says: _We are the fallen angels, soaring through ebon skies upon darkest's wings._  
He says: _We are those who lurk in the shadows, that prowl the midnight hours to prey upon the heartless.  
_ Crawly looks almost wounded when he says: _We are the chosen ones, who dare to explore the mysteries of the unseen realms and fall for this._

Crowley hates Crawly.  
Crawly hates Crowley.  
There is no hope for either of them; one of them will die soon.  
Very soon.

What happened next was in rapid sequences, but for the sake of clarity, it will be explained to you very slowly.  
The experience is that which can be felt when you are on a plane, and you hear a big blast from the engine. The aircraft is falling faster and faster; there is nothing you can do to stop it.  
So obviously, the first reaction is to scream. While you are crying, you notice something strange though: time slows down, you move like in a pool filled with honey. You are suddenly alert and can follow every movement as if it were in slow motion.  
This is the same feeling Crowley felt:

The demon Crawly has a long sliver of his bedroom mirror.  
Crowley takes a step back, but the woman grabs him by the wings.  
He hadn't noticed that he had manifested his wings. _When did it happen?_  
Crawly jumps forward, take him by the throat, sticks the glass blade in his shoulder, and the other is vaguely aware of the blood that starts to flow like a cascade of red wine.  
He doesn't notice it just because the woman had twisted his wings at the same time, tearing off as many feathers as possible.  
The hands are long claws like those of a harpy, long and black nails surround every single feather, beautiful like a crow's, she tears and burns them.

Meanwhile, Crowley screams.

Then he reacted by pure instinct: it wasn't something he liked to do, even if it had already happened to him before.  
It has something to do with adrenaline and being intrinsically a hunting animal. Crowley hated it when it happened. He was never in full control of his mental faculties when he reacted instinctively.

With a fast and precise movement, he tore the blade away from the demon next to him. He hears voices, but can't understand who is, where he is, what's happening.  
The idea of slashing the demon's heart that is facing exalts him: _if you have to die, _he thinks_, die with style and some satisfactions._

Crawly says: _We are the serpent.  
_ He says: _The demon who condemned all humanity._

Crowley screams at the demon. A hand clasped around his neck: _I hate you, leave me alone, Bastard.  
_ _Die, die, die._  
Crawly smiles: _Don't you see? We are one, I am you, and you are me. You're tilting at windmills, my willy old serpent.  
_ He smiles: _But if it makes you feel better, kill me. End me. Bite the apple._

Oh, Crawly is a terrific tempter. The very best. It's his job since the beginning of time.

Crowley grabs the blade more firmly, he squeezes it, the corners cut off his hand — _it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter_—and suddenly the piece of glass is stuck in the demon's chest beneath him.  
He pushes, pushes, to make sure he's dead.  
But Crawly, under him, emits a surprised squeak, his body is too soft and warm, his hair too light and his eyes too beautiful.  
He falters and drops backwards.  
Crowley grabs him before he can fall and slides with him to the ground.  
He says: _Why my old friend, my beloved? I've come all this way to save you._

_And you will suffer as he suffered, and fear and terror will strangle you, and you will lose the person you love the most._

"No."

_And you will cry and scream._

"No."

_Cause maybe God will also have cursed you, and you fell and burned to hell.  
_ _But this will be even worse than Hell._

"No, no, no—"

_Because God can't understand the fire that burns when you love with your entire soul.  
God can't understand the devouring emptiness that remains when your love dies._

“NO, NO, NO, no no no nononononono.” 

The demon cries on the lifeless body of his enemy, best friend, his love and reason of existence: The Angel Aziraphale.  
His face is pale, his body increasingly cold, his eyes glassy, white, dead.  
The shirt has lost its usual candour because now, there is a blood sea between them.  
The angel is dead. He killed him.

"It's all right, it's all right," Crowley repeats obsessively kissing Aziraphale's pink, fleshy lips, now bloodstained.  
"This isn't real. It's just a nightmare. It's not real. It's all right."  
He continues to murmur, trying to lift the body beneath him to rock him, but failing miserably because the blood is too slippery and the angel's body is heavy and impossibly real.

The woman approaches;  
In a low voice, she says: _This is not a nightmare. _

Crowley cries and is desperate, screams, kicks and drooling meaningless words. He wraps the angel in his burned and destroyed wings. The bow of crow feathers disgusts him, his beloved doesn't deserve to be crowned in black feathers but in gold and jewels: Ruby, topaz, and diamond. Beryl, onyx, and jasper. Sapphire, turquoise, and emerald should have adorned his forehead.  
For this, he rips out all those he can reach.

He hates Aziraphale because he didn't even give him a last farewell. He hates him because he had warned him to stay away from him; he hates him because he loves him and demons aren't built to love. He has lost capacity.  
  
He hates him because the emptiness inside him now is an immense black hole that sucks constellations, planets, comets, asteroids, the Earth, Heaven and Hell, and the fault is all Aziraphales who left him alone to guard this immense nothing.

She's probably saying something, but he doesn't listen to her. Every noise is muffled and woolly, the only sound he hears is the noiseless heart of the body beneath him, the slow slipping of blood.  
The smell disgusts him, he cries, the statues cry with him for the lost angel that was destined to protect humanity until the end of time.

She comes closer, finds herself in front of him.  
Crowley is completely lying next to the angel; completely covered in blood, completely destroyed.  
He doesn't care.

She looks at him with those glowing eyes, that look devoid of pity and compassion.  
The demon suddenly winces, makes a disgusted sound between sobs and he stops suddenly: there is something in his throat, he feels himself suffocating.  
He tries to spit it, but it hurts. Black blood starts to gush from the mouth, and it hurts so much, the stomach contracts as if he were ready to vomit, but his brain orders him to don't move the piece another millimetre. His throat has a violent spasm.  
_Fuck_, the demon thinks desperately.

He sticks two fingers in his mouth and slowly, slowly, draws a large piece of glass from his throat. The effect is immediate: he sobs and tries to inhale as much air as possible because his brain has forgotten again that he doesn't need to breathe. The skin burns, Aziraphale's body hurts against his because it is real and so solid, and everything is just too much, too much, too much.  
Maybe he's already dying.

Perhaps it is Aziraphale's death that will kill him in the end. He cannot conceive of a world where he isn't next to him. Aziraphale is like the sun, and you don't go around asking yourself what will happen the day it will never rise again. It is an inconceivable thought because it has always been there, and even though it hadn't always been, Crowley had long ago forgotten how it was like before the first dawn.

She still looks at him with her careless look, her black veil.  
She has something in her lap, we will soon explain what.

She looks at the big piece of glass and says, "He's still inside you."  
"Yes," Crowley says hoarsely.  
He doesn't try to hide his tears, he doesn't try to clean his clothes. Everything hurts but nothing more than the awareness of having lost the angel forever.  
Aziraphale is a motionless figure beside him. 

He doesn't know why he is so surprised: Crowley had always known that sooner or later he would hurt his best friend. He knew that the day would come when he would no longer find the angel waiting for him in his bookshop, no more walks in the park to feed the ducks, no more soft hands that take care of him without ever asking for anything in return, no blue eyes, sarcastic comments, sweet lips, nothing.

Crowley wanted to say something.  
He wanted to make a sarcastic comment, he wanted to say:  
"Please, I'm so sorry. Now I understand what I did to you. I thought I knew what it was like to lose the person you love more than anything else in the world. Now I realise that I never understood it. It hurts too much, this emptiness inside me is engulfing me in, please kill me."  
But his mouth was sealed, his brain was a blank sheet. He couldn't think, talk.  
All he heard was just white background noise. 

Crowley was no longer a person—not that he had ever been—he wasn't anymore an angel or a demon. It was like a broken TV that no longer receives any channels. His brain is a white screen that only emits interfering noises.  
He doesn't feel like a person. He's just something that laid to misfortune and destruction. 

She leans over him. In her hand, she has a violin, red like hellfire. The demon immediately recognises it because it's the same instrument he had used to tempt the composer.  
She hands it to him, and he takes it with shaky hands. The bloodstains are camouflaged on the red lacquered wood.  
"Now you know what you have to do," she said.

Dying no longer seems so terrifying if it means not living anymore with the emptiness left by Aziraphale.


	8. The Composer's Grave

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That red violin looks dangerous and the woman inclined to be ironically cruel.

There are a lot of old traditions in Italy.  
They can be found, mostly, in the small South villages, fomented by elders who educate their children to respect Death in particular ways.  
The wake undergoes certain customs: all house mirrors are covered with sheets. Otherwise, the dead's soul would be trapped. All the clocks stops.  
Women stay around the dead all the time and men generally go to another room. Prayers, silence and lament dictate the times.

Even the crying follows precise rules: It is believed that tears disturb the path of the dead, that they weigh down their clothes, so as not to torment the vacant soul, crying is absolutely forbidden after sunset.

When in these villages there is mourning, the hearse drove slowly through streets, from house to Church to cemetery. Every time he passes in front of a house or a shop, windows and doors are closed as a sign of respect and for ward off Death from home.  
When the body is taken away, the house must remain deserted, a single lamp illuminating a basin with water and a white towel because the spirit of the deceased may decide to return after twenty-four hours and need to wash after having wandered in darkness.

Death has always been fascinated by this kind of traditions.  
Obviously, they don't matter to her, isn't like a mirror or a shut window can stop her.  
But Death loves and respects these kinds of customs, this obsequious respect for her, these gestures born to make sense of that new emptiness inside people's hearts.

Death knows all the traditions by heart to honour her and respects them all, without distinction.  
Death is not kind and is not cruel.

Death comes from the first bite of the apple because she's the shadow's creation, born from men and lives in men.  
Unlike popular beliefs, she isn't who kills.  
Death is really not much more than a valet: she welcomes souls, accompanies them to face their divine judgment, goes back and starts all over again.  
Are men who kill each other. It's War that kills. Are Famine, Pestilence and Pollution that exhaust the body and make it sick. Above all, it is Time that kills. But all together they bow before Death.

Death is never cruel or kind;  
Death is just inevitable.

〄

**Church of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, Padua, Italy, 509 days after the Apocalypse that never was. **

He didn't know how long he had cried.  
He didn't know how long he had been there sobbing and praying that all this would end. The emptiness inside him was a vast chasm, his body was imploding: he was shaken by violent convulsions, strong and suffering sobs, there was no more air in his lungs, his lips were purple and his eyes red for crying and fatigue.

Despite this, when she ordered him to stand up, he obeyed.  
He picked up the violin and turned to the door.

Crowley looked at her, eyes lost and empty, soul far from his body, there and not there, to be or not to be. The feeling of being lost in a dark forest, like if was sleepwalking. He knew this for sure, his body was moving on autopilot, following her by pure instinct. He couldn't perceive what was happening at that moment. Two skeletal hands touched him, took him by the shoulders, and he could barely command his body to look at her.

Her, who had never done anything wrong in her life, a little woman, nothing more, had managed to damn a demon.  
How strange, Crowley thought, how funny it was.  
_ How did she do it?  
_How this little thing managed to damn him in a worse way than God herself?

She looked at him, smiling, and he felt the need to melt his body in coils, return to the ground and crawl at her feet until she put her foot on his head, crushing him.  
Would have been appropriate. But the woman wanted him to play for her.

He found himself thinking, in the fog of his soul clouded by agony and despair, how much he loved that woman because now she was the only thing that remained between him and Crawly.  
Her, the only one who could understand this inexorable pain that burned inside him more than Hellfire, more than holy water and the sacred ground on which they were walking.

She says: This is the day we get free.

He smiles and thinks: I love you.  
He thinks: I love you, my saviour, my queen, my only Goddess.  
He thinks: I love you because, unlike God, you have at least the decency to give me a way out of this fall.

Then he says: I am yours.  
He says: Now, take me where I will be buried.  
He says: Wash my body with water and holy oil like he used to do, do whatever you want. Show me your very worst. I'm yours, yours, yours.

The journey hadn't been long, but for Crowley it lasted a year or maybe a hundred. He found himself in front of a plaque with a shovel in his hand, not really sure where it had come from. He looked at the headstone and, despite the ruined throat, said:

"This is the composer's grave."  
She stood behind the stone and stroked it gently.  
"Look better," she said.  
The plaque that bore the composer's name until now had now recited with hollow red letters:  
_Here lies_  
_ Anthony J. Crowley  
His sweetest lie led him to the grave. _

The demon would have laughed, but his heart could no longer bear another second of that emptiness that spread inside him.

The woman says: Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.  
"Yes."  
"Dig." She ordered.

Crowley looked at her, this little woman who had escaped the clutches of Death just to bring him torment.  
As cruel as beautiful when she asked him to dig his own grave.  
There is a delicate flair in her command, a hellish irony in the gesture. After all, he had metaphorically forced the composer to dig his own grave, making him crazy with his violin.  
Crowley took the shovel and did as she had told.

There was a reason if graveyards were used to protect the souls from demons: it wasn't impossible to cross, he was the overwhelming proof of it. Perhaps, a devil more connected to hell would have caught fire at the first step. For Crowley, it was like acid that burned every time it touches his skin.  
The deeper he went, the more his skin was marked by cuts and abrasions, burns, frying at contact with the sacred ground. When he had dug for more than three meters, he did nothing but stop on the spot.

She says: Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.

He did nothing but nod.  
He bowed to the ground and took a handful of damp soil and swallowed it.  
It burned but didn't stop.

He only thinks: More, give me more, I need more.  
The snake inside him writhing and screaming and he smiled with grim satisfaction. 

She raised the bowl and carried it over his head, ready to pour the final blessing on him:  
She says: This is the day we get free.  
She says: Now take your violin in your hand, serpent.  
She says: Play one last time for me.

〄

**Church of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, Padua, Italy, 509 days after the Apocalypse that never was. **

Aziraphale and Anathema appeared in a beam of light in the small garden in front of the Church.  
It was a quiet day, but the clouds piled to the east foretold that soon there would be a storm and it would be a big one.  
The angel swallowed because the last time he had seen such dark clouds was the first time he had met Crowley. Seeing them again left him with a strange feeling of anxiety. The sky thundered as if to announce a bad omen as if to say: during the first rain you met the demon, I wonder if it will also rain the last time you'll see him.  
He shook his head to get rid of those dark thoughts, it wouldn't have ended this way. Anything that threatened Crowley would stop him.

He turned to Anathema and knew immediately that she was feeling the same fear as she looked at the building. The Church, from the outside, had white walls, was small and seemed a quiet place of faith. Despite this, there was something incredibly sinister like a malignant atmosphere that permeated the air, an aura of pure desperation. The little Church looked more like a haunted house than a place of worship.

It wasn't the building itself but the feeling it emanated. Both of them were extraordinarily perceptive and empathetic towards this kind of things. Obviously, the angel more than the girl. Still, over the years they found themselves noticing the same sensations almost simultaneously. Love, joy, passion, pain, melancholy, they read these emotions easily unless someone tried to hide them at all costs. 

The Church seemed to have witnessed great pain and despair, and now the walls were stained by it. 

Above all, it was the black-cloaked figure on the threshold that made the couple shiver. Aziraphale stepped back, placing a hand in front of Anathema's body. A clear message to backwards and hide behind him. He looked at the figure, and in a moment he replaced his fears with all the courage he could manage.

Aziraphale looked at Death and said: You will not spread your wings upon the demon Crowley  
Death replied: YOU CAN'T GIVE ME ORDERS, FOOLISH PRINCIPALITY.

Now, it's essential to stop a moment to understand one important thing. The vow "What God has joined together, let no man put asunder" is not a random choice of words. The Joining we are talking about is not just about a couple of humans or entities but has a much broader vision. Aziraphale, After he drove the man out the Earthly Paradise, had given his sword to Adam, moved by love for the creatures so dear to God. Her—always knowing everything—had looked down at the principality, asking where his sword was, immediately forgiving the little lie stammered by the angel more out of embarrassment than malice. 

She had observed her humblest son guarding humans not only because that was his role—Him, the guardian of the eastern gate of Eden and therefore, by extension, humans—but because he loved them deeply and with blind devotion.

Aziraphale was a guardian.  
And like every guardians, he needed a weapon to defend and protect.

Aziraphale had given away his sword, and at the same time, War was born to wield the first weapon given to men. However, no one could ever have divided Aziraphale from his flaming sword for the simple reason that God had blessed the union.  
Whit this, I mean that no matter how far Aziraphale was from it: He was born to fight to protect and guard and his weapon would always appear in time of need.  
With a movement of the hand, a sword covered with sacred flames appeared in the angel's right hand and Anathema jumped back, surprised.

"You will not spread your wings upon the demon Crowley." Aziraphale repeated, raising his weapon. The angel's wings unfold, and he looked at Death with the eyes of an angel who hasn’t done much smiting in the last millennia but was mostly confident that was just like riding a bycycle and once learnt was not easily forgotten.  
Death looked at him with what might have been an amused expression, even if it would still be impossible to say as his head was nothing but a skull.

LOWER YOUR SWORD, PRINCIPALITY. said Death, I AM HERE BECAUSE CANDLES HAVE BEEN TURNED ON, SACRED OIL PREPARED AND THERE ARE WHITE COVERS ALREADY SPREAD.

Anathema went slowly to Aziraphale and put a hand on his shoulder, "What does it mean?" She asked, looking at the entity and clutching inside his bag a kitchen knife that she always carried with her, when necessary.  
(Not that she had any illusions that it would have had any effect on Death, of course, but the gesture made her feel a little more self-confident and anyway, if Death had decided to reap her soul she wouldn't have left without making a bit of skirmish.)

"Someone has prepared everything necessary for extreme unction... it means that someone is going to die soon." The angel quickly explained.

EXACTLY, added the figure wrapped in the black shroud, FOR NOW, I AM HERE TO WAIT. IT'S MY JOB.  
I COLLECT SOULS. I GET ONE BY ONE, WITHOUT ANY EXCEPTION.  
"So stand aside. I am in a hurry and have no time to waste talking to you." Said Aziraphale, bitterly.

Death stepped out, and Anathema followed the angel who put his hands on the wooden door. He stopped.  
"When I'll enter in this church, She will see me." He whispered those words so softly that Anathema wasn't sure if they were meant for her or if were a thought said aloud.

SHE ALWAYS SEES EVERYTHING. Death commented nonchalantly.  
"She always sees everything." The angel repeated to himself as his hands shook against the dark wood.

The truth was that since they stopped the Apocalypse, Aziraphale had avoided churches as best as he could. This was because those sacred places were like a lighthouse in the night. She always saw everything and everyone. Everything that is, that will be, that was, but also what would and wouldn't have been. All the possibilities of the universe. 

Aziraphale was afraid that once under the watchful eye of God, in her house, he would be judged for lying, for tearing up the script of the Great Plan and for having loved the adversary.  
He knew that the judgment would come sooner or later as he knew he didn't feel the least remorse.  
The only thing that gave him the strength to push the doors of the church was the primordial instinct to protect and guard what he loved most: Crowley.

The spectacle that awaited them was horrid. The floor was covered with a dreadful carpet of blood and black feathers. The church's pews had been destroyed and all the statues cried blood. Anathema put a hand to his mouth in disgust. Aziraphale trembled because the force of the pain that permeated that place struck him like a dagger, instinctively stepped back and stood in front of the girl, as if to want to protect her from something she probably couldn't feel.

"My G—" she whispered but stopped half an exclamation when she remembered what the angel had just said. Better not to annoy the great Lady of the upper floors.  
"A—Aziraphale ... that's just what I saw in my dream..." she moaned, frightened.  
"Crowley..." the angel whispered desperately, seeing that, despite the disaster, there was no trace of the demon. But at the same time, a spark of hope lit up in his heart.  
He put a trembling hand to his face and thought: If he came out of here, maybe he's still alive.

Then, suddenly, a ray of sunlight struck the small Church's rose window on the front wall in the right corner. Several things happened: Anathema looked towards the illuminated altar, and the soot and dust that dangled in the air suddenly seemed golden flakes. The interior, which had appeared a moment before a horror's movie set, once again became a clean, bright place, the paws in their place again, the statues immaculate, the altar candid and sacred.

Anathema had, vaguely, the sensation of a sweet and reassuring voice that whispered: _Fear Not.  
_ The girl, without knowing why, all at once remembered all that sweet memory when she was a child, when her mother was combing her hair or when she rolled up her blankets. When she told her that everything would be fine, when tickled her and laughed or when she sang them a sweet lullaby.  
She could vaguely think that this was a strange moment to remember something so nostalgic, yet those thoughts were so reassuring that she stood for a moment with her eyes closed, enjoying those delicate images.

Aziraphale turned his head slightly towards her, and when he saw Anathema, with her eyes closed and warm tears of joy sliding down her cheeks, he put his hand around her arm and made her sit on the nearest paw, making sure the girl was all right.  
Then another sensation: no voice had yet spoken, but she imagined that an authoritative and warm voice say: _Aziraphale, Principality and Angel of the Eastern Gate. Come Closer, My Son._

Anathema imagined it only because, the angel in question, had straightened up like a pin and walked slowly towards the altar with his sword in his hand and a determined expression on his face. He stopped at the end of the last step, knelt before the altar after kissing the white sheet and stood there, motionless.

"Dominae," Aziraphale whispered reverently.

Anathema looked at him; the angel was no longer the soft owner of a dusty bookshop but an ancient knight from a medieval book. She could picture him wearing a golden armour with a sword in his hand, the expression of someone that will never allow any injustice to go unpunished before his eyes.  
The angel looked like the most divine of all creatures, kneeling with her head resting gently against the edge of the altar. His hair like gold threads shining in the light, eyes closed and his wings spread backwards.

"Mother, I am your humble and most devoted servant. Please, lend me your ear." He paused, like if he was waiting for some kind of answer. The silence was unblemished. He spoke again. "I know I've disappointed you beyond measure, and I know you see everything in the world and universe and I'm here to receive your judgment." Anathema felt like an intruder listening while the angel confessed.

"But first Mother, You who entrusted me with the flaming sword to defend and protect, You who taught me that we must love our neighbour as ourselves. You, who taught me that there is no greater sin than to believe that even the wicked do not deserve your love and forgiveness... allow me to save one of my fallen brothers."

"Let me Fall if that's what you want." He whispered without hiding his sadness, "Because I love the adversary, I worship him more than you." The words resounded between the doric columns, among the specks of dust that swayed in the air and among the sacred texts, "Your judgment is ineffable and unquestionable, I bow to your will. I only ask you for one last grace, let this be a farewell gift: let me see what torments my dearest friend."

"Let me cover one of your fallen sons, the demon who cried for the children left behind from the ark and who gave men awareness and knowledge, the demon who protects and saves and who never once moved his hand to bring death and destruction."

The light then became more intense, and both were invested with images that, to be fair, Anathema couldn't understand: there were a garden, a cemetery, and two women both dressed in black. One of them has lips painted red, and Anathema has the vague feeling that it is something absolutely indecent, the woman radiates frivolous malice, but it seems to be just a mask that hides sweetness and love. The other woman is young and beautiful, but her face is tired and sick. She sees the white Church; she started to feel a sense of great sadness. They weren't really images, the girl realises, they were feeling.

Feelings like the ones you feel when you watch a horror movie when the main character is about to open a door, and you're there that you want to scream:_ Don't do it!_

She saw red, white, one hand on another hand. Anathema feels fear and enormous satisfaction of a lie told for the wrongest reasons, the conviction of having done a great job that will bring you nothing but despair.  
A shot, a laugh, and blood, blood, blood.

She gasped while the angel exclaimed "Oh!"  
The voice was far away, while Anathema tried to stand up and falling against the paw, breathless. 

"OH!" Aziraphale exclaimed even louder, and Anathema winced while recovered from her vision. She felt vaguely confused and weak, but the light was still so intense, and a strange calm washed away all her fears.  
She wondered, vaguely, if every angel of heaven always felt that way... but maybe, she thought, perhaps that was a miraculous exception because, if every angel felt like that every day, none of them would have felt the need to start a war. 

"Now, I understand!" 

"Thank you, oh thank you, mother." The angel whispered gently as he kissed the gold ring that he wore on his finger with great devotion - the same one you would use to kiss the feet of a saint - he stood still and bowed slightly: 

"Thank you for not abandoning us." 

Aziraphale turned and started walking quickly back to Anathema and the door putting away the sword. It wouldn't need it. He had a determined expression of who knew what he had to do, it wouldn't have been easy, but wouldn't have stopped until he had completed his mission.  
While the light faded gradually, a gentle voice whispered in their ears: _There is no sin in love._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Silly thing to know: the traditions I mentioned at the beginning of the chapter are, in fact, authentic. They are mostly followed in Southern Italy (but not only!), mainly by the elderly. When I was a little boy, I remember attending a funeral vigil with my best friend (our parents have always been friends)  
She suffers from catoptrophobia and, as she often says "Maybe say to a nine-year-old girl who has to cover the mirrors because otherwise, the soul of my grandfather could torment our family for eternity wasn't the wisest decision my grandmother made."  
(This is basically where all the story came from)


	9. The Death in Love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Crowley is ready to perform his last sonata.   
There is something strange about this ghost and maybe things aren't simple as we can imagine.
> 
> PS: If you haven't done it yet, my advice would be to take a few minutes to listen to ["The Devil's trill"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7rxl5KsPjs), since in this chapter the music is particularly important. If you can't or don't want to, it's ok; the music will be described anyway.

**Violin Sonata in G minor, B.g5**

**"The Devil's Trill"**

**Larghetto affettuoso—Andante—Allegro**

**Church of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, Padua, Italy, 509 days after the Apocalypse that never was. **

In the exact moment when Anathema and Aziraphale left the church, the sound of a violin invaded the cemetery. The angel had looked around, trying to figure out where the music came from. Time was running out, and he could feel his heart beating wildly. For a moment, he felt the desire to stop and pray for divine intervention, but he knew that it would be completely useless. By now he had clearly stated on which side he would have lined up: neither with Hell nor Heaven but only with Crowley. It was his job to protect and defend his ideas, and he couldn't ask for help, it wouldn't be right.  
He would have been a hypocrite.

Behind him, Anathema swayed visibly.  
"Wait, Aziraphale!" She begged. "What exactly happened? Damn it, did I just meet God? I mean, _God_ ? B-but anyway, this isn't important right now, what's going on with Crowley? What were those images? Where is he? I don't understand!" she cried.  
Aziraphale stopped on the spot and looked her up and down as if he was searching for injuries or, more likely, if he thought she went mad. 

"Oh dear, I'm so sorry... I didn't think how confusing this situation could be for you. Yes, that was God, I hope it wasn't too much for you." He said uncertainly.  
"I hope it wasn't—" she repeated, incredulous "Aziraphale, that was God with a capital G, the one and only! I'm positively freaking out!" The girl stammered as if the angel had just said something incredibly idiotic.  
"I'm sorry, you're right." He answered quickly. "I promise you I'll explain, but I have to think about Crowley first."  
Then he added, "But you are visibly shaken, dear. Stay here to rest, I have to go to him."

"Yeah, I don't think so." Anathema said firmly "You two dragged me into this mess and damn, I want to help you!" She continued, putting a hand on his shoulder. "When all this is over, you'll have to explain everything. Primarily, you will have to explain to me how God is a Woman and never went out, but damn, if this isn't a slap in the face of patriarchy!" she said with a nervous laugh, taking Aziraphale by the arm and pulling him towards the garden, while he tried to process the girl's mood change as quickly as possible.

"What's this music?" Anathema asked after a bit.  
"Crowley."

The girl remained silent for a moment, walking quickly. The music was something otherworldly.  
Sad and melancholy, was like talking about a wounded soul, sleepless nights. It was a delicate waltz between two lovers who would have had no other opportunity to meet. A rainy day, a tear that slowly slipped down a young woman's cheek. But it was something more: like a perfume that is gradually discovered, a flower withers, a lover who falls asleep to never wake up again. Painful and delicate, the music glided lightly between the graves and the cemetery statues.

"It's so beautiful," Anathema said, moved.

They ran until Aziraphale stopped in an ample open space. He moved his head slowly, observing the sea of tombstones until the music changed out of the blue, and the angel pointed to a distant stone and started running again.  
The music had turned into something more crude and desperate, like the blade moved by a madman, fast and feverish, seemed to be played by a possessed.  
It never stopped, even when the two reached a freshly dug grave. A three meters deep' hole with Crowley inside.

The demon had hidden his wings, and Anathema thought it was a fortune because he was a horrible sight even like this. He was covered in blood, his face was swollen with tears, the eyes were wide as blurred as a blind man's. There was a violin In his hands that played with agility, dexterity like it was as simple as breathing for him. Every movement the bow tore the skin of the hand and arm. He didn't seem conscious enough to react to the pain he was probably feeling at the moment. The body trembled, the skin burned, and he didn't seem to breathe, but despite this, he seemed intent on continuing his Sonata.

"Crowley, Crowley enough!" Aziraphale exclaimed immediately on his knees in front of the tomb. The girl noticed with horror that the name of her friend was written on the tombstone and knelt down beside the angel, trying to reach the demon with her arms, begging: "Crowley, please stop!"  
The demon didn't seem to hear them.

"I know what happened," Aziraphale said, raising his eyes to the sky a moment, looking at the clouds and returning to focus all his attention on the red-haired boy beneath him.  
"I know you're distraught, but it isn't your fault. It was never your fault. You protected her, do you understand?"

"I killed them. Both of them damned." said what could have been Crowley's voice except that the demon had neither opened his mouth nor seemed to have noticed them. 

"No, you didn't damn them, Crowley!" Aziraphale insisted, looking in terror at the bowl of holy water resting on the far edge of the tomb, in front of the headstone, right on the demon's head. The angel sighed deeply, tried to speak clearly because that was the only thing he could do to save him. "Let's go back to the bookshop, let's get out of here, let's talk about it in front of a nice cup of tea, my dearest." He tried to say. The demon ignored him.

"Crowley, listen to me: you've always given a choice to every single person you've ever tempted. You have always said, from the beginning, that tempting a person meant giving him a choice. You tempted Eve to eat the apple, but you also allowed her to decide ... Eat the apple and be punished or stay in Eden forever without knowing the difference between good and evil." He said confidently, not really knowing if Crowley he was listening.

"I have tempted humans too. The Arrangement, remember? When it was up to me to bless and tempt in the same city, I always gave the other person a choice."

She says: I've never had a choice.  
Crowley repeats: She never had a choice.

"Yes, it's true, it's true." The other answered hastily. "But that's not all, right? You know what happened."  
"I know it's painful, my dear boy."  
"But please, remember."  
"You can't leave me alone, I will not allow it, Crowley!"

She says: You destroy all that's beautiful in this world. You killed him once, you'll do it again.  
Crowley repeats: I destroy all that's beautiful in this world. I killed you once, I'll do it again.

"This is nonsense. You never did anything but try to save me and protect me, you never killed me because I'm here in front of you." Then he sighed deeply, clenching his fists in the damp earth. The air was electric, the promise of a storm looming over them. "It was just a nightmare, Crowley. A hallucination, a dream. It wasn't real." 

She says: He's a ghost, just like me.  
Crowley repeats: You're a ghost, just like her.

"No, Crowley." Aziraphale sighed "You know it isn't true. You know that ghosts don't exist, they are from human's superstition, they don't exist." He repeated obsessively, trying to mask the panic at the thought that soon it would have started to rain and every drop of water in contact with the cemetery ground would have turned into holy water to purify the old graves.  
"If you've ever loved me, Crowley, you have to remember."

Crowley's body moved without him needing to control it: that was his Sonata, he could very well play alone by itself. The arms kept moving, precise and secure as if they hadn't noticed that the rest of the body was shaking.

  
He closed his eyes.  
He tried to remember.  
This because, as always, there was nothing that could deny his angel.

〄

**Church of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, Padua, Italy, 1770  
** **What do time and morality have in common? The answer is relativity: they are relative to our experience. The joyous time always dies too fast, the sad and painful one too slowly, but time is still the same. A lie is a deplorable thing for some. For others, it is synonymous of salvation.  
  
  
** It was a beautiful day.  
This doesn't mean that something terrible wouldn't happen soon.  
Crowley had begun to hate the pattern it had started to create: everything happened on the most beautiful days, on those that are sunny and quiet. Those nights, where you can see the stars and where there is no cloud in the sky.  
Like when the angels fall or when someone is driven out of a garden. When a child is delivered inside a basket or when the Apocalypse approaches—

(A voice says: No.  
Says: Go deeper.  
He says: Go deeper.)

It was a beautiful day.  
But sad.  
And he was on the edge of a garden.  
"Why?" She asked vehemently.  
"Because it's an order," the other replied sharply.  
"No, explain to me," she said spitefully. "Do you want me to go inside in a fucking church?"  
"Unless you can tempt someone from a distance, yes Crowley. I want you to walk in a fucking church."

"Come on, demons can't get into churches." She moved away slightly from the man trying to make him change his mind and failing miserably. "What's the point, then? The composer is dead, How does the wife fit in all this?"  
"It's her who told him that he played better than the Devil."  
"So much ado about nothing," she sighed, "it's a pretty common expression around here."

"You know their customs better than us." He said, there was a scornful note in those words but that Crowley ignored. He was a demon, after all, he couldn't surely expect him to be kind.  
Hastur looked down at her "You're dressed like an asshole."

No, hey, not this. Crowley looked magnificently.  
"I am dressed like a woman ready to go to a funeral." She replied, raising his eyes to the sky and thanking someone for his dark glasses. "In this area, women come to one side, men arrive later and cannot talk to the widow."

That was what Hastur didn't understand. The miserable idiot couldn't have known how much easier it was to secure souls to Hell if humans had begun to tempt each other. To do so, he needed to mix among them, be friendly, study them.  
What guilt did she have if she ended being fascinated by all those traditions, customs, music and inventions?  
Hastur had a fourteenth-century mentality, after all. It would have been useless to explain to him that he couldn't have appeared in a church full of aristocrats dressed like him, with a tunic that hadn't been fashionable for at least four centuries and covered in mud from head to toe. Crowley couldn't stand demons like him. 

She had said to himself many times: Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.  
(One of the best excuses to go out for dinner with Aziraphale, she thought with a grin.)

Hastur pulled her by the arm. "We are those who lurk in the shadows, that prowl the midnight hours to prey upon the heartless." He said with a malevolent smile "We are the fallen angels."  
"How dramatic." The red-haired woman sighed. "There's no need to repeat the words of Him over and over again."

Hastur glared at him and added: "I don't trust you, Crawly."  
Crowley let her tongue hiss between his teeth, annoyed. "Yes, I know. What's I have to do?"  
Hastur says: "The wife looked so desperate when that guy died... those below want to see blood. Make her kill herself."

Crowley swallowed, her heart started beating in the chest, but she was a demon, and she learned a long time ago that it was better not show any sympathy for humans, the consequences would be disastrous.  
"Suicide? But there are so many people killing themself nowadays. Wouldn't it be more fun if she had a clandestine affair with, I don't know, the priest? That would be a show I would watch."  
"Beelzebub ordered it, they said it would be fun to see the little girl go crazy in Her home and perform one of the worst sins that can be fulfilled."

"Ah, I see that Beelzebub had another bad day." She grumbled, her face dark. "But you know... this isn't really... my scene." She stammered.  
"I don't care about your scene." Hastur was starting to lose patience. "I warn you, if you don't, there will be consequences."  
"No, of course, I know." She murmured, "It was just a suggestion. You know, I'm always kneeling for some evil action, I'm not very convinced about this church thingy... but obviously, I love this kind of thing... ngk... always ready to put discord and stuff like that."  
"You're the serpent who condemned all humanity, Crawly. Never forget that."

Crowley closed his eyes for a moment, it wasn't something easily forgotten. He thought back to the last time he found himself thinking that all human suffering was nothing but his fault. It had happened somewhere in Spain, when he was intrigued and had ventured into a prison to find out why he had earned a commendation for what humans called "The Inquisition". Women and men chained and tortured who screamed and cried, fresh blood gushing like waterfalls from their bodies and voices shouting prayers to a God who wouldn't listen to them and he found himself thinking "Ah, this is worse than hell, it was me who—"

(There was the sound of a violin, very far from him, a vibrant note that caught his attention, promising terror and despair.  
A voice says: No, no, my dear. Don't think about this.  
He says: go more in-depth.  
He says: you were doing so well, my dear boy.)

She was on the edge of the garden.  
But that wasn't a real garden, it was a cemetery. Crowley had failed to find enough courage to go inside, still didn't know if she would have burned to death as soon as she put her foot on the sacred ground. She looked around and saw a young woman walking with her face covered by a black veil, and she thought, with a slightly hysterical laugh, _maybe I won't have to burn, after all, perhaps I'll have some luck._

A small miracle convinced the girl to approach her.  
"Good morning." The woman said, with a thin and sad voice.  
"Oh, are you the composer's wife?"  
"Elizabeth." was her only answer, nodding slightly.

"He died three days ago." The poor girl said after a moment of silence.  
She looked sad, desperate.  
Crowley looked at her: she was beautiful. Not that lustful beauty that was the female version of the demon but a youthful and ethereal beauty.  
She had ash-blonde hair, sea-blue eyes. Crowley thought in a moment of panic that she was so beautiful and shining that she could almost be mistaken for an angel.  
_Like her angel._

Se took a moment, saying to herself wasn't right yet for her temptation, she needed to know her better to understand how to win her soul. The snake inside her moved and hissed, whispering maliciously that this was nothing but an excuse to buy time.  
"I'm sorry, darling," she said softly, mimicking the way Aziraphale had of comforting humans. "What happened?"  
"I don't know, I don't know," she murmured. She looked around as if to check that nobody could hear her "I think it was a devil." She whispered softly.  
"A devil?"  
"My Giuseppe had been a violent man when he was young. Not with me, never with me. But he was always nervous and tried in every way to find fame and success." She explained "We have never had an easy life. We secretly got married because my uncle, the cardinal, wouldn't accept the marriage. When he found out, my husband had to run away," she told her.  
"When we managed to find each other... when it was all said and forgiven, we returned to Padua and found a way to live a peaceful life."

"Then he woke up one day, picked up the violin and started playing." She whispered as if that was humanity greatest tragedy, "And from that day on, he hasn't stopped since. He didn't eat, he didn't sleep, he didn't look at me. All he said was that he would burn in Hell's flames if he hadn't played that Sonata better than the devil of his dream."

Crowley swallowed.  
Not because she felt guilty, it was the composer's idea. But seeing this young woman so cold and desperate, imagining her praying her husband to relax, to let leave the violin to find a moment to kiss and hug her was strange. He never imagined that the consequences of that little temptation would lead him to this.

"I hate him," she said.  
"I hate him so much, I hope he's burning right now."  
"The devil?" Crowley asked.  
She nodded.

"I hate him so much. I would like to make him feel the same terror that he felt, I would like him to understand what it feels like to suffer so much. I would like to make him feel the same pain as me for losing the person you love most in the world. More than God, more than anything else that could exist on this land."  
Crowley for a moment thought that this must be the right time, that surely she had to be a terrible woman, a sinner. Maybe it was right that she would die. But then the girl came closer and hugged her. She didn't know why she did so. She didn't know how to react.  
"Wha-"  
"Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry." She whispered, choking the words, the tears were so many that they crossed the dark veil, dirtying her dress. Crowley didn't dare to complain about it. "You're the first person who listened to me, everyone tells me that I shouldn't cry, that he's in Heaven, but they don't know anything, they don't know what he said in his sleep, that he would go to Hell even if he were such good man—"

Crowley wrapped his arm around her, held her close. She could see in her soul, and what she said before were nothing but empty words, daughters of mourning and despair. She could see her desires and aspirations, the dream of a happy family, children running across a meadow, the desire to be a mother.  
Her soul told of a kind girl, who gathered flowers in a field and put them together to create a beautiful composition to give to her husband. It spoke of a woman who had embraced his lover every night, who whispered that he didn't need to be afraid, that everything would be fine but above all, it spoke of a love born in adversity, blossomed where there had only been contrasts, horrors.  
Just like _—_

Crowley surrendered.  
She took her hand, stroked it gently. "Go to the church and stay there," she ordered in a whisper. "Go, and don't get out of there, don't listen to what the voices tell you." She pleaded, kissing her hand.  
She was so young, so bright and beautiful.  
Yes, she was fifty years old, maybe for the period she was anything but young, but what are fifty years for a demon who lived for almost six millennia?  
Nothing, a blink of an eye. 

And she knew, she knew, that for some humans living for fifty years was more than they could hope, but for her, they were nothing more than children. Her soul was so young and fresh, so innocent. Never a sin, never a word of hatred, she has never been tempted by lust or pride, she was neither sloth nor envious. It wasn't fair that she ended up in Hell.

She let her go, and she ran into the church, without even knowing why it was so important to go inside. Crowley had made sure that she thought it was vital for her to be there, she needed time to devise something, to find a good excuse, a ploy to change the woman's fate. Then a voice whispered in his ears "What are you doing, snake?"

  
Hastur behind her had heard the whole conversation.  
"Ah, you know... she's so angry, maybe she'll kill someone." She said, trying not to sound too scared.  
"Better a murder, no? So much worse than suicide. More dramatic."  
"No," Hastur said with an evil smile. "You have been given an order. Don't forget, Crawly, we're demons. We destroy all that is beautiful in this world."

Crowley, again in his masculine clothes, less constrictive and more importantly, they had thicker soles to resist the consecrated ground.— Above all, they were not dirty with the girl's tears, which made him feel contemptible— entered into church trying not to pay attention to the pain it caused walking. He felt drained and exhausted.  
He needed to think, think, think.

Meanwhile, the woman was crying desperately.  
It was as if his aura was enough to tempt her into taking a gun and get over with it. The pain came in waves, it was like being hit by sharp blades, and he kept thinking:  
_Aziraphale is dead, I killed him, me. It was me. Into this church. His body lying on a sea of blood and—_

(And a voice says: No, no, my dear.  
He says: you have done nothing but protect me all this time.  
He says: keep going on. I know it hurts, but you're almost there.)

"God, at least this time, give me a sign."  
"I'm here, a Demon in a church, not a word about this? Not even a little reaction?"  
"Tell me what to do, just this time. Should I let her die? Should I save her?"

It was in that moment he understood: he felt the unbearable silence of the church, the emptiness, the certainty of being in a place where God was watching him, silent and cold as always, but She had done nothing but turn Her back on him.  
And it was normal, really, Crowley was a demon, and it wasn't like he had expected anything, but he had at least hoped She would protect one of Her daughters.  
"These humans are like children. All they do is destroy each other. But now she's here, in your home. The least you could do is protect her. What's the point of having a place you call home if you don't protect your children?"

Silence;

"I hate you, I hate you so much. That's not fair, you should protect them."

Silence;

He thought: All this is too much for just having eaten an apple or for asking some questions.

He didn't know where the gun had come from. If he had been just for a moment less impaired, if he had managed to move, frozen by the pain and the unbearable silence of God, if he weren't suffocating by the mourning of having lost a mother who probably never loved him, would have reasoned. He would have understood that the girl had always had the gun with her.  
That, after all, all the world's pain, wars, mourning, weren't Hell or Heaven's fault but all of those humans who make wrong choices.

Perhaps, he could resolve the situation. Maybe he could convince the woman to kill him, she wouldn't have ended up in Hell because certainly killing a fallen angel couldn't be a sin. The idea wasn't that bad, he wouldn't die, he would just discorporated, and she would certainly not have been condemned for killing a demon.  
Demons were different from humans, right?  
It was like doing social work, thwart a demon would surely have secured her a place among Heaven' Saints.

She was weeping desperately, and he had come closer. The woman in front of the altar was a terrifying figure, wrapped in black veils and dissolved in the pain of a forever lost love.  
"I can't live with this pain inside me," she said sobbing. "Every moment, every breath is pure agony."  
  
"I'm the demon you're looking for." He said, "Ending your life wouldn't make any sense, you should revenge him."  
She looked at him with wide eyes, and he took off his sunglasses, tossing them away, revealing his snake eyes. She backed away, her hands shaking tightening her hold around the gun.  
"And then?" She whispered, "after I kill you, will I feel better?"  
"Yes." He lied.

"Will the bed where I lie every night seem less empty and cold? I will hear my husband's music again? There will be someone who kisses me, embrace me and tell me to don't be afraid and that he loves me immensely?"  
"Yes, yes." He said, getting even closer to her.  
"It isn't true." She said when her hands had slipped down to her sides, and her shoulders had dropped.  
The eyes were red, thin and sick, the veil full of tears and sweat.  
"Nothing will be the same as before, one day I will die, old and alone, and I will only regret not having put an end to this slow agony."  
Then she squeezed her hand around the gun and raised it to her temple.  
"NO!" Screamed Crowley and as quickly as a snake and tore the gun from her hand.

She threw herself forward, trying to snatch it back from him and for a moment it was as if they were dancing, she was pulling and pushing, he was trying to extricate himself from her, too out of his mind to think about what he was doing.  
Time stopped for a moment as if they were both moving in a honey's tub, suddenly he was too conscious of the pain that caused him to walk on that ground, so he lost his balance.  
All he heard was the deafening noise of a shot that echoed in the silent church, exploded by the gun in his hand.

〄

The girl had fallen in front of the altar. Almost like one of those human sacrifices he had witnessed among the pagans before Christ's appearance.  
Blood was sliding towards him, it was slipping into the bricks of the floor, splashed in his face, on the white sheet covering the stone table and he had fallen to his knees, making the gun that was still tight in his hand fall into a smoulder.  
He put his hands to his face but immediately dismissed them when he discovered, disgusted, how wet they were with the woman's blood. 

"She killed herself," Crowley said. 

He needed to convince himself to be able to lie before Beelzebub lifeless eyes.  
He needed to sound confident, to look sincere. There was a small mirror near the girl's body, probably slipping from her skirt pocket during the fight, he took it and looked into his own eyes and began to repeat obsessively:   
She killed herself.  
She killed herself.  
She killed herself. 

He looked at himself as he repeated those words like a mantra until his eyes began to look sincere.  
The whole story, backwards and forwards.  
Telling himself the most beautiful and tragic love story, a story of terror and fear. He narrated a story about a ghost so terrible in his humanity because he needed something more powerful than pure imagination.

Fear, fear makes you tremble in sleep, makes you believe that the shadows produced by a lamp are monsters ready to destroy you.  
Fear is powerful, is the product of imagination, it's a defence mechanism, it makes you run faster, it makes you survive.  
Crowley knew fear well, had lived with it for six millennia.

So he imagined something terrifying:  
A woman, tears, a shot.  
Again.  
  
A woman, tears, a shot.  
Again.

A woman, tears, a shot, tears, blood.  
Again.

"I curse you because I loved him."  
Tears, a shot, blood.  
Again.

Blood, blood, blood.  
All over again.

When Death appeared behind him, he didn't move. He didn't jerk. He stood there, kneeling in front of the woman. He studied her eyes, as her face remained hidden and yet visible beneath the veil, her eyes glassy and blind. Terrifying but at the same time beautiful.  
When Death approached, he said, "She killed herself."  
OH, IS THIS WHAT HAPPENED?  
"Yes."

LAYING WILL NOT BRING ANYTHING GOOD TO YOU. I REALLY DON'T CARE WHAT YOU SAY.  
I TAKE THE SOULS AND LEAD THEM THROUGH A DOOR. THAT'S MY JOB. I DO NOT DECIDE WHERE THEY GO AND I DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY WILL FIND ON THE OTHER SIDE. 

"This is something that will torment me until the end of my days, eh?" Crowley asked with a grin that concealed a vein of panic.  
Death didn't answer.  
As a rule, he never gave false hope.

It was evening when Crowley crawled out of the church and garden. No angel was waiting for him on a tall white wall but a demon covered in mud, who looked at him with hatred and contempt.  
"Well?"  
"She killed herself," she whispered softly.  
And he repeated those words to Dagon.  
To Ligur.  
To Beelzebub.  
And they believed him because Crowley believed it and so it was what had happened.  
What was one less soul that was missing from the roll call?  
Nothing.  
No one noticed it, and they soon forgot what had happened.  
All except Crowley.

〄

**Church of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, Padua, Italy, 509 days after the Apocalypse that never was. **

Crowley trembled, the notes began to be more and more distorted, until he let go of the violin that ended up on the ground with a squeaky sound of the strings.  
He fell in front of the instrument, covering the mouth with his hands in disbelief.  
At the same time, the angel kicked away the bowl of holy water and the liquid spilt onto the ground, not a drop touched the demon's body three meters below.  
"I killed her, I killed her." Crowley repeated, tightening his fingers around his hair and pulling hard as if they were his only rescue anchor.  
Aziraphale jumped down into the mud with him and took him in his arms: He had made a pair of white gloves appear on his hands so his skin wouldn't touch the demon, making sure not to bless him. Crowley seemed on the brink of extinction, he didn't want to risk doing even more damages.

"My dear, my beloved, you didn't want to do it, but you saved her. She is now in Heaven, safe, God herself told me. "  
Crowley began to cry, scream, and Aziraphale was convinced for a moment that he would be suffocated if he didn't take him in his arms. The sky above them was increasingly black and threatening, he covered him with his white wings to protect him in case it started raining.  
"Let's get out of here, my love." He whispered, hugging him gently. Crowley didn't seem to respond. Not because he was lost in the depths of his mind. His body had succumbed to everything that happened during the week, and he had fainted with tears still running down his cheeks.

Aziraphale took him in his arms and looked at Anathema who was watching them from above.  
"Take my shoulder, dear. Let's go home."  
In an instant, the three disappeared, the tomb looked as nothing had happened.

The first drops of rain began to fall on the ground.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that went down like a lead balloon. 
> 
> Well, it seems like the ghost is officially gone. (And do tell me, When I wrote this chapter I was almost lynched by everyone who had commented on the previous chapters claiming that poor Elizabeth was a bitch and then after this chapter, they felt guilty. Do you think the same?)  
Sorry, I never said I was a good person.  
But have faith, maybe Aziraphale can take care of Crowley now?


	10. Quietly Talking

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things can be hard to explain, but Aziraphale will do his best t  


**On a morning full of questions, where a witch and an angel share a cup of cocoa.**

"I'm not sure I understood what happened," said Anathema, holding in his hands the steaming cup that Aziraphale had brought her.  
"It's quite simple but, at the same time, very complicated." The angel said, sitting down next to her. "You see my dear. He, he has something that others don't." 

"Like what?"  
"Imagination." 

"But this... ok, he has a great imagination. I can see that. What I don't understand is how he could have imagined a ghost who almost killed him." Anathema said, looking at the angel, with a worried expression. 

"Oh, but that's the point. crowley's imagination is the greatest power he has." He shifted his weight a little and sat more straight against the white sofa, surprisingly soft despite the new and unused appearance. 

"I'll give you an example. Crowley imagines he can drive his Bentley through a wall of fire and he succeeds. Ignores the fact that he should put petrol in the tank and the car continues to work has it never needed. He thinks that his plants can understand and fear him and, without even realising it, it is so."

She looked at him, surprised "Sounds like ... _it's like Adam!"_

The angel smiled.

"Crowley isn't the antichrist, he cannot change the world. The small universe that we have built around us in six millennia, which we know as our pockets, though, seems to adapt to his expectations. But it always affects only him, in some ways. Although he believed I was dead in my bookshop, I'm not really dead."

"Oh. Maybe now I understand, "Anathema said. "But why imagine a ghost trying to kill you? it doesn't make sense."

"I'm not entirely sure. See, ghosts don't exist. Death doesn't let any of the souls escape, it would be a mess otherwise... I tremble at the mere thought of how many paperwork there would be to fill." He answered with a slight shiver as if he could imagine himself filling out sheets on sheets utterly useless all day long.

"It isn't cemeteries, houses or mirrors that are infested or cursed. Are people who feel that way. Maybe he always felt responsible every time something happened... for every new war, for every terrible thing that men did, he always ended up blaming himself."

"For the apple?" 

"I think so." Aziraphale was silent for a while. 

Anathema was the one who had the strength to break the moment: "Well, he's wrong." He said firmly, "He only offered us a choice. Stay in the garden, naked and stupid, or leave the garden and make our decisions. And anyway I don't understand what's wrong with knowing the difference between good and evil. If God didn't want us to eat the apple...why leave a tree full of them in the middle of a garden? Why not place it on top of a very high mountain or, I don't know, on the moon? It's frustrating, it's like God has always wanted us to—" She stopped abruptly. 

Aziraphale looked at her and smiled tenderly. It was a smile that said: _Here we go again. _

"Ohhh," she said, amazed "Well, what the heck, this is a bit like cheating." Neither of them said anything else, but they stayed quietly sipping their cup of hot cocoa.

〄

**Mayfair, London, England, 511 days after the Apocalypse that never was.**

The first time he woke up, his body seemed to be heavier than lead. All his senses seemed out of order, too exhausted to feel or see. his eyelids like heavy black curtains that let him wander, with his mind, like a blind man.  
Like a computer that comes back online after a forced restart, every sense returned slowly: he could feel he was on something soft, the terrible smell of disinfectant, the acid taste of earth and blood in his mouth. He could hear someone speak, vaguely recognising Aziraphale's voice and someone else, the incessant roar of the rain, but still couldn't find the strength to open his eyes.

Aziraphale was talking, perhaps with him, a hoarse and distant voice and he couldn't understand if it was for the emotion or for... something else.He tried to say something. Let him know he could hear him.  
He needed to open his eyes, look into the blue ones like the lake in Eden, but the eyelids were too heavy, the orbs burned too much, and there was still this memory of Aziraphale lying on the ground, in a sea of blood and he was dead, dead, dead.

There was a gentle pressure on his forehead, like the palm of a hand, delicate as a feather and before he could even realise, he fell asleep again.

The second time he woke up, it wasn't as gentle as the first.  
Everything hurt, a deep pain as if someone was vivisecting him or skinning him alive or, maybe, as if someone had just set him on fire.  
He felt his body burn out, like a candle match. It burned, and he started screaming, not that he wanted to do so, but he was so tired and the pain so intense and powerful and real that eliminated any restrictions that had imposed over the years.

Two kind hands took his face, white gloves against his cheeks, a voice that flowed like water repeating: It's all right, everything will be all right, I know it hurts, but you'll feel better soon.  
Crowley wanted to believe him, but the voice was Aziraphale's and the angel had died before his eyes in a sea of blood.  
He had killed him. 

So to Hell with any sense of pride, he started to cry, to beg him for absolution and said: please, please forgive me. I love you so much, I would have liked to keep you safe until the sun went out, but there is a serpent inside me, and it's evil. It fights and devours, screams and hisses, its scales scratch and tear and I don't know how to save you. I no longer have the strength.

But Aziraphale's voice says: I forgive you.  
He fell asleep immediately afterwards, lulled by a soft murmur like a long-forgotten song but that he would always remember.

The third time he woke up, it was because of that strange instinct that all humans have when they suddenly wake up when someone observes them in their sleep.  
Was a demon, he vaguely remembered, who had started that tradition to scare men ... or maybe it was just an instinctive reflection, like a defence mechanism?  
Sometimes it was challenging to find the difference between a well-told lie and the truth. 

But someone was touching him, human hands were wrapping something wet around his arm, and he started to move, he tried to free his arm because: "No, don't tell me it happened again, a human, a human, I tempted another human, I don't want this, I didn't want—"  
"Don't move, please." A sweet, feminine voice said as she continued to wrap her arm in something cold and wet.  
"No, my dear, it's all right, there's nothing to be afraid of." Aziraphale's voice repeated, and Crowley relaxed instantly. "Anathema is helping me to fix you, now show me your wings." 

He says: I will watch over you.  
He says: Now rest, my dear, you need some rest. 

And Crowley did as he said. It didn't matter how tired or suffering he was because, after all, if Aziraphale was asking for it, no force in the world would have prevented him from fulfilling his every wish.

〄

Aziraphale watched Anathema work meticulously as she wrapped white gauze around Crowley's body. The demon had woken up twice already, both panicking, first delirious and then trying to escape the girl's grasp. In the meantime, Aziraphale had done his best to hold on, feeling like he needed to cry even if he knew it wasn't the right time. His whole body trembled, the primordial instinct to heal what had been injured, but he knew well that he couldn't touch the demon, not yet. He didn't want to risk damaging him even more, his light would have been perhaps too much for him. Then he stayed close, without touching, overseeing the girl work.

He was hit by a feeling of extreme gratitude towards the witch who had refused to leave them alone in a time of need.

"Don't be silly, Aziraphale." She had said in a confident and firm voice when he had told her she could leave. "If you can't heal him, leave it to me. I don't want to risk something going wrong, and I don't want to leave you alone." And then she added, with a sweet smile "We are friends, aren't we? I love you, I love Crowley, now stop worrying and pass me those gauzes."

The angel would have liked to point out that they had never done anything for her. To be fair, they had made more confusion than anything else during the failed Apocalypse. However, he remained silent making appear whatever she needed, looking at the girl as if she were the most splendid of all maids.

When Crowley had woken up for the third time, Aziraphale had asked him to show his wings. They had turned him on his side, and he had immediately obeyed, perhaps too tired and vulnerable to protest. 

(In another moment, he would have worried about it, remembering how Crowley used to do everything he asked him as an automaton when he entered his bookshop late at night, exhausted and absent.) 

The wings had appeared taking up half the room large as they were. Usually beautiful and tidy, they were now a horrible sight. The feathers, once of gorgeous ebony and brilliant, no longer reflected the colours of the firmament as obsidian, but were stained with blood and the colours were dull and grey. The longest feathers had been torn, twisted and broken, and there were massive cuts along with them.

Aziraphale had held back a cry that perhaps would have made the earth tremble, imagining violent earthquakes and downpours upsetting the city of London and people screaming in the street, frightened. He stifled his desire, terrified of what would have happened if only he had expressed all his pain. He passed a trembling hand on his left-wing, and Crowley whimpered in his sleep as if he could feel fear enveloping his friend's heart.

"Oh... Crowley," Anathema sighed looking at the wings with wide eyes, "he was him that—"

Aziraphale looked at her for a moment, unable to say a word. He had withdrawn his hand after another groan of pain from Crowley, watching from afar the wings, unsure how to proceed. 

"Aziraphale." Anathema's confident voice woke him from his mental rambling, "we have to do something, Aziraphale." She encouraged him.

He was still silent, thanking God for creating Anathema because the angel wasn't sure he would have the strength to do anything if he had been alone. 

"There's a bone that looks broken, we should fix it... I think." She continued a bit less secure. "I don't know anything about wings, but maybe I can look in some books, a potion or ointment for those cuts? Perhaps we can bandage them or something."

"Yes." He sighed. "Ah, this is all my fault. If only I had been more careful, if I had understood earlier... maybe all this wouldn't have happened."

"No, no Aziraphale." She said, touching Crowley's right-wing with delicate hands and making it lean against a chair she had moved to balance its weight. He walked towards him, embraced her friend who seemed about to cry. 

"You couldn't have known." 

"I should have. I have known Crowley since the beginning of time, and I never realised he was suffering." He murmured "No, even worse. I knew he was suffering, and I decided to close my eyes and turn my back to him, what kind of angel does such a thing?"

"But now you know, don't you? You decided to protect him, to stay on his side. Now you can help him."

"I'm afraid, Anathema." He said with a trembling sigh "I'm afraid because if it was a demon that tormented him, an angel, Hell or Heaven, I could have done something. Fighting, defending —not that it's my favourite scene, but I could have tried— But this is all Crowley's doing and how can I protect him from himself?" 

"I know, I know." She said, moving her hand circularly against his back. "Remind him who he is. Remind him that he doesn't deserve this. Remind him that you'll always be by his side." Anathema moved, after a light pat on the shoulder, and started to look for anything that could help her friend. Together, they arranged the bone and Anathema had medicated the extended cuts, arranged as much as possible the remaining feathers and, much to Aziraphale's displeasure, had detached the now broken feathers.

They ended it was dawn, and Anathema felt exhausted but to see the demon resting in the bed, the sheets clean and white again, felt also a sense of great satisfaction seeing his friend finally peaceful.

Only when Anathema was done Aziraphale find a moment to apologise, leave the room for just a moment and cry in peace.

Even an angel is allowed a moment of weakness.

The girl didn't remember when she had fallen asleep on the room chair. Despite the position, she was incredibly comfortable and warm, realising, surprised, that the angel had wrapped her in a soft blanket. Crowley must have woken up for the third time, without shouting or crying. Aziraphale was speaking softly to him, brushing aside the wild hair that crowned his face. He didn't know what he was saying, more a soft murmur than real words, but the angel looked at him with devotion as he passed a damp cloth over his sweaty forehead.

Anathema was enchanted by the way Aziraphale had to touch Crowley. She would have stayed there for hours watching them, even if those intimate gestures made her feel like a voyeur.

He washed his body with delicate touches, whispering gentle words in a low voice and with a subtle tone. At the same time, Crowley let himself be manoeuvred as if all his bones were made of rubber, without ever protesting or trying to escape. The girl clasped a hand to her chest because Aziraphale was handling the demon as if he was a sacred relic, something too precious to be touched with bare hands.

Fragile, delicate.

"Crowley?" He asked in a soft whisper. Anathema flinched because silence had so far been absolute. Crowley had moved slightly under the sheets, unconsciously going closer to the angel who gently stroked his temples. Anathema tried to listen to the conversation but gave up when she noticed that Crowley's words were almost imperceptible and so subdued that it was like listening to a hissing snake. 

"It's all right, my dear." Aziraphale murmured for the umpteenth time. "Sorry if I didn't understand before, forgive me if I was so stupid, you tried to tell me so many times, and I left you alone to suffer all this time."

Anathema looked at him: this angel as old as the world itself —may be older— crying like a child before the demon's body. The hissing became louder, and Anathema would also have been able to hear a few words if only she had had better hearing.

What she couldn't know was that Crowley, exhausted, could no longer control his tongue which —the traitor— tied his words with a strange hiss, like background noise. 

Usually, when that unpleasant phenomenon occurred, he was embarrassed so much that his cheeks turned a furious red. When he heard the same sound, Aziraphale couldn't suppress the grin that was anything but angelic.

This, Crowley always said, was because Aziraphale was a bastard.

Now, the same noise was barely audible to the demon and a source of great concern for Aziraphale. "I am a disgusting being, angel." Crowley sighed, delirious with fever. "I'm a demon, why don't you understand it? You can't seek my forgiveness, I have nothing to forgive you for, you shouldn't want my forgiveness, you fool." I babbled as he fidgeted in bed, as if trying to get up but couldn't coordinate his limbs. "Why you don't understand that I can't be good, that I don't know how to do it, I will end up destroying you as I did with that couple, everything I touch decay, it rots and dies, I don't want you to—"

Aziraphale broke his river of words. He gently took his face in his hands, wiping his tears with his thumb, as he had done many times before. He kissed his forehead gently, right between the eyes. Aziraphale smiled.

He looked at him with loving eyes, blue and red, beautiful as the sea at sunset. He took his face in his hands, caressed his cheek with his thumb, a gesture of pure, unconditional love, something that goes beyond any human conception.

Aziraphale says: Listen carefully, Crowley.

He says: It took me so long to figure it out —it's something you taught me— Hell and Heaven, angels and demons, are just names for two factions. They don't define us.

He says: You are a good person because you are; because even if you are a demon, you have decided to have free will. You imagined so intensely that you had it that you gained it. You used it to make the right choices.

He says: You are a demon and a good person and I love you for this, my dear.

Aziraphale kissed his cheek and diligently began to wipe away the other tears that came from the demon's eyes. The yellow snake eyes were a pit of liquid gold, as beautiful as two precious gems submerged in a deep lake.

So beautiful to take your breath away.

Crowley says: I love you.

He says: I loved you so much that it hurts when you're away.

Aziraphale looked at him and sighed in relief. "I know. Let's make sure it doesn't hurt anymore."

And then:  
“Sleep, my dear." The angel whispered, "I will stay with you until you ask me to leave. Even in that case, I could make a fuss." He said with a soft laugh. "Now rest, my love."

〄

**Now rest, my love.**

There was a certain gentleness in the way his body floated back and forth. In the dark, it was challenging to say what was above or below, but he wasn't a bad feeling per se. He felt totally detached from his body, and maybe it was only out of pure habit that he could imagine having a human body even if he was in space. Wearing the same corporation for six thousand years have that effect, after all. 

He felt light in the darkness: for a demon, there is no place that was too dark. Space wasn't exactly black, it was an infinite mix of different colours that humans could only imagine. If for them, black is the sum of all colours, a demon could see all of them as superimposed in long floating lines and distinguish each easily. 

It was something that had to do with molecules, the way light reflected. Crowley never cared much before, he didn't mind now.

He had always loved space.

He remembered with profound fondness his old work amid the stars, how he could mix different clouds of gas, use the periodic table as a colour palette, the sky as a canvas, to create something beautiful. And now he was there, lulled by the sight of a million celestial bodies, constellations and planets, suns and stars. He observed how the Mireids moved around Hadar and Proxima, while the other stars that formed Alpha Centauri revolved around themselves, drawing a beautiful circle of light.

In space, everything was more straightforward. There was no pain, fear. No Fall, nor fire. There, he was neither a demon nor an angel but only another small portion of cosmic dust. Perhaps, he could have remained in that place forever if he hadn't been for that deep sense of melancholy and loneliness. The only thing present was this overwhelming awareness of something missing, something important.

Crowley considered his options: the idea of staying there was almost tempting. Now that he knew that, on earth, the monster that had tormented him for three hundred years was nothing but his imagination, the idea of going back seemed frightening. There, among the darkness, Crowley could lull himself into the security to be able to suppress Crawly even without her. Maybe he would have managed to protect Aziraphale if he would stay there, far away from him.

Aziraphale.  
What was that name that always came to his mind? It was something —someone— that had been by his side for a long time. Yet, now he was struggling to focus on it. The universe was perfect, bright and beautiful, but it was empty and lonely without his angel. 

Angel.  
He closed his eyes for a moment, remembered an arch of bright white feathers protecting him from the first rain. A room full of books. Long nights spent talking and someone that whispered in his ear "I am with you now, nobody will ever hurt you again."

He decided: he ignored the emptiness, the solitude and the overwhelming fear of silence, and began to struggle to reach the surface. All the pain of the world, Hell and the Fall were nothing if Aziraphale had been next to him.  
So, he woke up.


	11. The Real Ghost in this Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everything should be fine now that Crowley is free, but it was a curse long and consuming, and now the demon needs a moment to understand what happened. Also, Aziraphale is, literally, an angel.  


** Mayfair, London, England, 522 days after the Apocalypse that never was. **

For a long time, he had just slept.  
No dreams, no nightmares.  
He woke up as you do after a bad night: with a terrible headache, dry mouth and that awful feeling that there was something profoundly different, without being able to understand what had changed.

Physically, he could feel a constant flicker under his skin, as if he had taken a sharp electric shock and was still suffering for the aftershocks. Technically, it wasn't that far from the truth. The skin was warm, it tugged and burned under the gauzes, it wasn't too painful —it was more annoying than anything— so he didn't care.  
Lying on the bed, he turned his head slightly towards the mirror to his left.

The mirror had been in that room since he bought the apartment but had owned it much longer. Once, it was right in front of the bed. He moved it when Crowley realized that it was always the first and the last thing he saw when he tried to rest. 

Another person, —human, angel, demon— would have taken and thrown it into the ocean, but Crowley trembled at the idea of disposing of it, but if someone had asked him why he wouldn't have been able to answer.  


He remembered without distinction that he had destroyed it, but now the mirror was intact again. Quiet, as if it hadn't been the object that had tormented him for three hundred years.

(Not that it was the object per se terrified him, of course, but he was in front of it where Crowley had lost his savoir-faire that night when he decided to destroy all the mirrors in his apartment. The object now made him feel judged.)

He sighed deeply, tried to blink.  
One;  
two;  
three times.  
He turned his gaze to the mirror. From his angle, he could see only one corner that reflected only the white wall of his bedroom.  
"Oh," he whispered, "she's gone." 

(There had been something — _ someone _ , said a voice in his head— that had tormented, anguished and persecuted, him for three hundred years and that he had hated for so long that he was almost convinced he was in lo—)

"She's gone." He repeated a bit louder.  
The realization should have hit him hard like a gunshot, like an arrow shot from a bow, but instead left him with a strange feeling of emptiness, almost loneliness.  
It was a strange feeling.

"Crowley." A distant voice pulled him from his thoughts. "You're awake." Aziraphale's voice startled him, so loud compared to the silence that had surrounded him so far. The angel moved slowly as if, at any moment, Crowley could snap like a wild animal cornered, as if he would try to escape or shout. He wanted to tell him that he didn't have to be so concerned, but at the same time, Crowley felt on edge, unsure of how he should react. 

"S'Zira" hissed softly. 

The angel had sat on the bed corner, so close to Crowley that he could hear his gentle breathing. He reached out to touch his forehead but stopped as if he had just remembered something.  
"Can I touch you?"

Crowley nodded, watching the angel brushing his hand through his hair. He moved slightly, almost a subtle movement, a clear invitation to lie down beside him which Aziraphale accepted willingly.  
The demon moved slowly, masking the painful expression as best he could, moving his body to rest the head against Aziraphale's chest.  
_So alive, you are alive, you are alive,_ he found himself thinking as he listened to the heartbeat of the angel against his ear.

"You almost scare me to death," Aziraphale said after a long moment of silence, still running his perfectly manicured hands through the long red hair. "You slept for a whole week, the fever just broke, and for a moment I almost thought you would—" he paused for a moment as if he didn't dare finish the sentence. Not that he needed it, Crowley had already understood what he meant.  
"You can't leave me alone, daft serpent, how would I survive otherwise? One day is torture; I daren't even imagine an eternity without you." 

Crowley had been avoiding is gaze all the time, not daring to look at him.  If he had been able to process his emotions a little better, he probably would have hated himself for being so selfish. He couldn't bear the thought of his beautiful angel with a void in the middle of the sternum as large as his own; he would never have imagined he could feel alone. 

It wasn't the same, he supposed.  
Aziraphale, unlike him, could still feel the warmth and love of God fill his heart.  
What did Crowley have instead? Nothing, always nothing.  
  
He didn't say anything, though.  
He would have been an unfounded hypocrite.  
Aziraphale had God, but Crowley had him.  
He was the only one who could make him feel alive. 

Then he said: Can you stay with me for a while?  
Aziraphale smiled and held him gently in an embrace: Until the end of time if that's okay with you.

〄

**Mayfair, London, England, 538 days after the Apocalypse that never was.**

Crowley, sometimes, felt like he was floating.   
Not like when he was an angel and flew from one cloud to another creating complicated solar systems and constellations, that was a feeling of extreme lightness that he would never experience again. No, he was perfectly aware of the weight of his body that anchored him to the ground, the annoyingly heavy legs that made even the act of getting out of bed difficult.   
Mentally, emotionally, he was floating.  
  
There were times when he remained alone in his room, the white walls were closing around him, and the view blurred, it was in that moment he knew he would detach himself from his body. It wasn't itself a bad feeling; it wasn't a good feeling.   
Only odd and made him feel insecure, inadequate. In any case, when he was in that state he hears nothing, he felt nothing, and Crowley told himself it was fine even like this. 

  
But he was sleeping less, Aziraphale had pointed out.   
"Why aren't you sleeping anymore?" He asked uneasily.   
"I'm fine. I've slept enough."   
"Enough," he repeated, wrinkling his nose "sleeping for a week for you is like taking a quick nap for a human."   
"We don't really need to sleep."   
"My dear—"   
"I'm fine." he cut him off.   
"I'm just worried about you. You would heal faster if—"

Sometimes he was incredibly aware of the time that slipped through his hands.   
Like now: he could still see Aziraphale speak, his mouth move, his nervous fidgeting. But his voice was distorted, the words mixed, the colours around him merged, creating a dark spot. That was the only warning he got before detaching himself completely. It never went too long, but it was increasingly difficult to control, and it was inevitable that Aziraphale would have noticed.

(A moment before is looking at Aziraphale who says "It's okay if I change those bandages? Do you want something to eat?" And the next moment he is blinking, the bandages are fresh and clean against his skin, they itch a little, he realizes he's looking at a cup of steaming tea that he didn't remember having taken in his hand.   
Crowley turns and looks at Aziraphale in the eyes and tries to mask his confused look. He misses the sunglasses. He probably had lost two or three hours where the angel had passed to caress him gently, and now he was looking at him as if—)

  
Technically, he knew he should have been happy to be free from that nightmare. Maybe angry for what had happened, maybe sad.   
Anything would have been better than the apathy he felt in those days. Anger, despair, sadness, anything other than that total lack of feelings, that void that didn't seem to want to close.   
There were no more voices in his head; the only noise he heard was the melting and curling of the snake in his chest.  
When it didn't, and the hissing sound was more a subtle white noise, when he could focus his attention on his surroundings, Crowley sat on the bed and thought.   
What had he been? What is he now?   
What had happened, what hadn't happened?  
He carefully catalogued his memories between what was real and what wasn't. He had destroyed his plants, hadn't set fire to his apartment, had gone to Madame Tracy in search of holy water, hadn't fought with Crawly, had dug his own grave. The woman was not real. 

Often, he walked with the vague feeling that, since the woman was no longer there, the only ghost left in that apartment had to be him.   
Other times, he wandered touching the walls with his fingers, not so much to maintain balance but to be sure they were as real as they looked.   
Each time he stopped in front of the mirror, observing himself for endless minutes (hours, days?) without recognizing himself.   
The reflection in front of him was of a man (approximately) with long red hair arranged in a soft braid that he didn't remember having done.   
Thin and pale, an aspect accentuated by the heavy sweater larger than two sizes. The person facing him had the appearance of a corpse with eyes surrounding by dark shadows and bandages that enveloped his entire body. He looked malignant and sinister, perhaps because of the yellow snake eyes that caught the whole sclera glistening in the dark. 

Occasionally, he recognized that he was the one in the mirror —this after hours of observing himself— at other times he identified him as Crawly, and the feeling of not having a physical form became more intense.  
(Crawly looks through the mirror and says "Weird, huh?"   
And he asks "What?"   
Crawly inhales, exhales and says, "I know you want me to disappear, but we are a demon."   
He understands, finally understands that for all this time had done nothing but look at his reflection —not a devilish woman— or maybe he had looked at Crawly. He often forgot the difference.   
He says: "And I know it hurts, I Fell with you."   
"I'm fine."   
"Oh, sure." Crawly laughs "He's fine." He repeats sarcastically.   
"Never been better."   
"It's this tranquillity, isn't it?" And strangely the devil in the mirror seems almost sorrowful. "We are a demon. We aren't made for calmness and peace. Perhaps this is the point. Who will be the next to hurt us? An angel, a demon or a human?"  
"Aziraphale would never hurt me."  
"No, of course not." Crawly agrees, sincere. "He would never hurt us, obviously."   
"Obviously."   
"There is a question about whether he wouldn't do it to defend himself."  
"No. I trust him. It's you I don't trust."  
"It'd be a funny old world if demons went around trusting each other." The other nods. "But it isn't just that."   
"And what is it?"   
"The real question is: This calm, this tranquillity... It isn't something that doesn't belong to us. We are demons. It's pain that gave us birth, unanswered questions. We are fire and ice, dust and soot. This makes me wonder... is this real?")

〄

The worst thing about that sense of inadequacy — _ the emptiness _ , Crawly corrected him in a hiss,  _ the inability to recognize yourself. What is this loneliness, why do you feel so alone? _ — was when he felt so unbalanced he preferred the darkness of his bedroom where he could shield himself rather than face the world outside. 

Aziraphale tried to get him out of the apartment many times, always with a gentle tone, more a suggestion than anything else, but he didn't want to. He hated those walls, they frightened him, but the idea of going out seemed an abstract concept. He didn't remember what was worse. He closed his eyes and let himself be lulled by the sensation of floating three meters from his body without knowing when he would return to the ground. 

Now, that was a new problem. On the other side of the door was Madame Tracy. He knew that he had done something irreversible, had shown something terrible to the woman and was utterly ashamed for it.

"Crowley" tried the angel "There is Madame Tracy here, she has come to see you."  
The demon was currently lying on the bed, wrapped in soft and warm blankets, showing his back to him. As soon as he heard the bell ring, he turned away, pretending to be asleep. 

But he was awake.  
Crowley knew it, Aziraphale knew it. Damn, even the woman in the other room probably knew it. He didn't want to be rude, but with everything that had happened, he didn't have enough energy to see anyone. It wasn't the first time this had happened, but Aziraphale always understood.

He gently touched his acnestis and then whispered: "Okay, don't worry." And then he went back to the other room, explaining to their guest the demon was sleeping, but he would surely be happy to meet her as soon as he woke up.  
Sometimes it was difficult to put into words why he felt nothing in those moments.

This wasn't always the case, and perhaps that was the most painful thing.  
Aziraphale now kissed him.  
(Not as he did once, because there had always been fleeting kisses and caresses and then catalogued as lightness, foolishness, by the angel, ever weighed down by the terror Heaven or Hell discovered them and by his second thoughts and "This was a mistake, Crowley. It'll never happen again. I can't. I can't..."  
That always left the demon in a deep pool of despair. It was only in those moments that Crowley truly regretted having Fallen.)  
  
No, now he kissed him in the morning when he brought him breakfast in bed, and Crowley always had a hard time processing what had just happened. He looked at him, and his brain decided to take a vacation— he went in down, system error, Crowley.exe has stopped working, please reload— and the angel was smiling in a not-angelic way watching the demon's face become even redder.

"Are you trying to spoil me?" He asked.  
"Absolutely not, vice is not up to me, as you know I'm an angel," Aziraphale said with a laugh hidden between the words, an inside joke because they both know that he is the bastard between the two of them. "But I'm worried. You should eat something, my love."

It was the voice, Crowley thought. Aziraphale's voice... he barely heard what he was saying, but in that instant, he simply loved Aziraphale so much.  
Everything about him made him feel good, for a moment he could forget that feeling of apathy, the silence, the fear of living in his apartment, he bathed in the sound of his voice and ignored the rest. He's the only thing worth living for.  
This is why he thought it was even more painful. Because when the angel came out the door, the sense of emptiness and non-being and non-existing became even more intense and perhaps he would have been afraid of it, he would have cried and screamed, if only he had been able to feel something. 

It's the lack of sentiments that frightened him.

_(This is because jumping from one moment to another had already happened. A moment before, Crowley is in a disco, a pub, an opium smokehouse, a hut._

_He blinks, and someone was touching him, hollow faces, dirty and sweaty humans, offer him something, and he doesn't even ask what it is, accepts everything, because he must ensure souls to hell._

_He blinks again and is lying on a dirty mattress. _

_He blinks, has nausea and aching body. _

_He blinks, is staggering on a deserted street. _

_Again. _

_There is a hand that touches him, and he feels safe, but still, he can't stop shaking. _

_Again. _

_He wakes up in Aziraphale's bedroom, his body and hair clean, he hears the angel's voice behind the door and realizes that it would be better if he got out of the way, promising himself that he would never do something like that again. _

_The point is, Crowley is terrible at keeping promises unless they are aimed at Aziraphale.) _

Crawly looked at him through the mirror, his face the exact reflection of his, and nothing could have stopped him now that the woman was gone. She, who in all her treacherous, terrifying, oppressive presence had been the only thing that had protected Aziraphale from the snake inside him, always ready to shoot and devour. 

( _ Indeed _ , one day Crowley admits with a low and flat tone in front of the bathroom mirror so that Aziraphale won't hear him,  _ maybe I loved the woman.  
_ He says: I loved her as I had never loved anyone before because she protected him from you and I don't care how much it hurt, nothing matters if I can keep Aziraphale safe.  


Crawly looks at him sadly and says "I never hurt him."  
"This doesn't mean you won't do it in the future.")

Maybe he should have gone away.  
Perhaps, he should have opened his wings, arched them, and flown far to another galaxy as not to be a danger for the angel. Maybe if only Crowley had been just a little braver, he would have done it. Still, he felt weak, miserable and perhaps, he had destroyed his wings forever.  
The idea of leaving Aziraphale reassured him, yet it seemed something absurd, he couldn't even take himself to considerer it.

This, because Aziraphale hugged him and he melted on contact, warm and soft, and he always felt too cold.  
Because the angel spoke to him in a gentle tone, he took care of him. His voice filled the silence, a continuous babbling of things that Crowley didn't understand or didn't interest him, but the sound was there, and it was something he could focus on.

Aziraphale with his books, his tea and his hot chocolate, his blond curls, his blue eyes were light and colours in his dark and grey world.  
He couldn't leave because... the angel had said he loved him and that he felt alone, and Crowley would have done everything to don't make him face the same cosmic void that devoured him.

〄

**Mayfair, London, England, 558 days after the Apocalypse that never was.**

Aziraphale was watching Crowley sleep.  
He did it often during the past centuries. He loved to contemplate the demon while was so relaxed and—more times than Aziraphale cared to admit—he liked to slide one hand along the temple, through his hair, listening to the other breathe slowly.  
It was probably one of his favourite pastimes, even more than reading.

Except that now he was doing it less than before. Crowley seemed to prefer to stay awake between the blankets, and he occasionally surprised him staring at the corner of the mirror in his room.

(The angel would have liked to take that damned object, shatter it on the ground, go back in time and curse anyone who sinned of such vanity for creating such a dangerous object. He never did; it wouldn't have been fair to Crowley.)

He spent nights reading books aloud because the demon seemed more peaceful when the apartment was less silent.  
Often, he found himself wondering if they would get to that point if he only would have been more sincere with himself. Could he have found a solution faster? Was there a better way to alleviate his dearest and oldest friend's suffering?  
The answer was ineffable, and he had begun to understand why the demon hated that word so much.

He always seemed tired in those days, perhaps because he was still healing, the fever and stress of the last few years had consumed all his energy reserves. Certainly, swallowing a handful of blessed ground wasn't the healthiest thing for a demon.  
His body was soft, lying between the white sheets, his eyes closed as if he couldn't bear the sight of what surrounded him.

There were times when Crowley fell asleep— this after days and days spent fighting it, he never did that for long, at least a few hours— and when happened Aziraphale was always ready to brush his forehead to take away all the nightmares that they could have disturbed his rest. It didn't matter what he did, in any case after a short time the demon would wake up with wide eyes, checking what surrounded him as if he could be attacked at any given moment.

The angel watched and studied him, trying to stay close but at the same time distant, respectfully waiting for Crowley to find the answers he was looking for.  
He had once said to him "You are going too fast for me."  
Maybe, in hindsight, he wasn't ready to face his feelings for the demon yet, they hadn't matured enough.  
He didn't want to make the same mistake with him, risking to make him run away unwittingly. Crowley had waited for six millennia, Aziraphale was ready to do the same for him if he needed to do so.

The problem was that Aziraphale was walking on an unknown path, and this scared him. The desire to fight and protect him was powerful; the old guardian inside him had awakened.  
Not only because at last, he no longer had to fear repercussions from Heaven or because now he was sure he wouldn't have fallen for loving a demon. Aziraphale had thought about it for a long time and had concluded that it was only because of he, a being— ethereal or occult, doesn't matter—had finally decided where his place was.

He had chosen Crowley and humanity's side, and this had awakened in him the need to protect what was important.  
Still, it was uncharted territory.

He could have insisted, forcing the demon to reveal what thoughts troubled him, perhaps with a blessing or just making him understand how much _he_ needed it. Aziraphale knew that Crowley wouldn't hold back on his request.   
The demon always did whatever he asked for. 

_ But... would it have been fair to do so? _

It seemed unfair, and Aziraphale could no longer hide his actions behind the illusion of doing something wrong for the highest purpose. He refused to force Crowley to reveal his most intimate thoughts, it would have been like pushing a wounded animal to the corner, he would certainly have done nothing but make him retreat or worse, he could have run away.

He stayed in that terrible middle ground, putting aside his desires and just staying close to him. He helped him to get dressed in the morning, unravelling and coating the bandages soaked with ointments, because Crowley was neither a demon nor an angel in his eyes, but a being who should always be covered with flowers and diamonds, with jewels as bright as his eyes. Agates and jades to frame his face, roses and rubies as a crown for his head. His body washed with oriental oils and perfumes and touched only to be revered, adored, kissed with devotion and care. 

For the nonce, it was irrelevant if the demon didn't look or listen to him, or if his words were lost.  
It hurt, it was terrible to see the person he loved most in the world so lost, but Aziraphale could be patient enough to wait for him and wishing he could say:  
"I've loved you for hundreds of years, every day a little more. My beautiful serpent you are like a gemstone to me, smoothed by storms, discovered by a child for pure luck. Even if you are fragile and scared right now, isn't it true that the most precious things are often delicate and to be handled with care? Don't worry. I will hold you near my heart until you convince yourself that there is so much light in you that even Hell seems like Heaven if you're next to me."

Aziraphale hugged him tightly until he felt the other's body relax when he was lost in his thoughts. He leaned his head against his back and whispered: "Come back to me. I'm here waiting for you. Come back, my dear."  
In those moments, he never knew what to do, so he combed his hair, longer than ever, and braided them. 

When Crowley looked in the mirror as if he didn't recognize himself, Aziraphale approached him slowly, saying to him: "Touch his cheek, his lips and his nose. Do you see? That's you, nobody else. If you still can't see it, that's fine. But don't hurt him, because the person in front of you had a very difficult millennium and now he needs rest."  
Crowley looked at him blinking, confused, and turned away as if he was ashamed for what he has just happened.

When he was in that state, he occasionally spoke to him. Aziraphale always felt a shiver run down his back. It was like seeing a corpse speak. 

"I'm so tired of all this." He said as the angel took his hands and crossed his fingers with his. 

Both were lying in bed, curled up facing each other, with blankets over their heads like a shield.

"About what?" 

"I can't feel anything. I'm tired."

"About us?" He felt a pang in his heart as he said "Would you prefer if I go away? "

"You should do it." Murmured Crowley." But please don't do this. Please don't leave me alone; don't go away."

"I would never do that, my dear. "Aziraphale said and then kissed him tenderly.

The truth was that Aziraphale wasn't good enough with words and was in a stalemate: Crowley hardly ever spoke to him, he turned away and seemed so distant that occasionally he felt the need to touch him to make sure he was still there.   
He had tried to take care of the plants, but he lacked the touch of the demon because they were yellowed and full of stains, and this was nothing but another failure at the moment.

He tried not to think about it and often found himself talking to Madame Tracy and Anathema who told him to be patient, to wait because Crowley only needed to let off steam but that he still hadn't found how. 

The two women had a calming effect on him and never seemed to take offence at Crowley's refusal to see the women.  
"He's sleeping." He said for the tenth time in a month. 

"Let him rest then," the older one said with a delicate smile. "Give him time to process everything that happened, it's not easy, and it will probably take him a little more time, you have to be patient... he has to let it go, have a good cry. I don't mean that he'll be better immediately afterwards, but that could help him."  
Aziraphale thanked her but then said he had to prepare more tea, trying to hide how moved he was by the kindness of the four humans.  
  
  


〄

**Mayfair, London, England, 566 days after the Apocalypse that never was.**

There were two spaces that Crowley had avoided as if they contained a deadly poison: the plant's room and the one where he had locked up all his musical instruments a few centuries earlier, pretending that it had never existed. He had studied in detail how Aziraphale had restored Da Vinci's sketch, the eagle's statue, the furniture, windows, mirrors. To human eyes, they could look like new, as if nothing had ever happened. But the demon could see the deep scars between the molecules that made up paper and stone, and if that was the result, Crowley didn't dare to imagine how the plants could be like.

One day like any other, he took a step further, crossed the threshold of the room where he preserved his private garden from the world. As soon as he saw it, Crowley heard only the plants shaking and that annoying whistle that felt every time he was alone in a room. He put his hands to his ears for a moment, closed his eyes and sighed.

Crowley's plants loved him deeply.  
This was because the demon provided him with everything they needed to be perfect: the soil mixed with the most nutritious minerals, water sprayed at precise intervals. They were always treated with care and passion.  
He did everything for them and certainly wasn't his fault if some leaves decided to rebel like fools, turning yellow as an arrogant challenge against him. He was forced to strip them of their comforts, drive them out of their beautiful garden, and replant them in the park's hard and dry soil at the mercy of bad weather and animals.  
Some plants _really_ didn't know how to stay at their place.

They continued to love him because, even though he was like a stern and cruel parent, from generation to generation, they had begun to know him. From leaf to leaf they had passed the secret of a sad and lonely snake, who didn't need much if not to vent his anger and to feel he had control over something, were they also simple plants. 

So they accepted each day as a challenge: Crowley's plants were like their master, survivalists.

They set in motion chlorophyll and everything that could be used to grow better, trying to stretch the few branches and leaves that were left to reach the demon.  Crowley was in the middle of the room, hands on his ears and eyes closed as he tried to ignore his trembling legs, trying to stifle the silence that enveloped him. 

"I don't need your pity." He said without even looking at them.

When he opened his eyes, they were trembling, conscious that they looked terrible. Crowley took a random leaf, full of cuts, and looked at it and for once, he avoided shouting.  
The plants had already seen his worst side, better to let them rest for a while.

It was there that Aziraphale found him. He seemed tired, weakened by sleepless nights or by a sleep that hadn't allowed him to really rest. In the centre of the room, among plants, which had once been the most beautiful he had ever seen, but now they were just broken branches and brown leaves.  
"Crowley?" The demon didn't reply, hadn't expected otherwise.   
Aziraphale turned around him, looking at his expressionless face, waiting for him to open his eyes. 

"I have to go," Crowley said suddenly. Aziraphale was surprised to hear him speak.  
"O-of course, my dear." He stammered "you have been locked in here for too long, give me just a moment, we can go feed the ducks, have lunch at the Ritz, take a walk—"  
  
"No," said, in a determined voice, the demon "No, I need to be alone."  
Aziraphale looked at him, feeling a shiver run down his back. "I understand."  
"It won't take long."  
"I'll wait for you here. I'll prepare something for lunch."

Crowley nodded, taking his sunglasses off the table, put them on and then left the apartment, without adding anything else. Aziraphale followed his every move, watching him from the large window as he walked along the sidewalk. The idea of following him in secret had touched him over and over again. But he hadn't, trying to restore a balance that seemed to have broken.

The demon wasn't lying. After less than half an hour, Aziraphale had heard the front door open slowly and close again and Crowley had gone silently towards the bedroom.  
The angel had watched him take off his clothes and get into bed, without saying a word. 

Aziraphale didn't comment on his behaviour. He sat down next to him, stroked the base of his neck and for the first time after entering into the church he found himself praying that someone— even God— could protect and cure the demon since he didn't seem able to do it at the moment.


	12. You will wake, having had a lovely dream about whatever you like best.

_Probably_  
_you’re who you were no more_  
_and rightly so._  
_(Eugenio Montale, Men who look back, Vv. 1-3)_

**Mayfair, London, England, 580 days after the Apocalypse that never was.**

Crowley felt trapped.  
It was as if he hadn't been out of his apartment for centuries, yet the first time he had stepped outside, he had had to go straight back. In those moments, he couldn't help thinking what would have happened if, crossing a window or a mirror, he had seen the woman again. 

He knew it couldn't have happened since the illusion had been revealed, it would've been impossible to go back, but the idea tormented him anyway. The emptiness was always present. He walked like a ghost among the humans who had always loved and hated at the same time, but who had never failed to intrigue, fascinate, bewitch him with their scrappy lives, their ingenious inventions, their way to be neither good nor evil.

Everything hurt, every movement an intense flash of pain, he could feel the skin slowly reforming. He felt lost, far from Aziraphale. At the same time, a sense of oppression assailed him every time he met his gaze, unsure of how much time he had lost between one conversation and another.

(The angel's light blue eyes were like a lake on which sadness and gentleness were reflected, he felt a slight feeling of discomfort every time because he knew he should feel the same way. Sometimes it was difficult to live with that lack of emotions, especially if there was someone next to him who showed them so openly.)

He didn't know where he was going. He wandered around the city aimlessly, lost in his thoughts, sometimes his feet carried him somewhere, without his mind realizing it. This time, his body had stopped in front of a building. Crowley looked at the name on the doorbell, aware that he should've explained and apologize.

He had two choices ahead: stretch out his arm and press that button or turn on his heels and cross the street.  
On the other side, there was a pub that promised litres and litres of the most exquisite alcohol. The temptation to drown that total lack of that something in absinthe and whiskey was tempting. The idea of forgetting what had happened for just a few hours, of being able to leave behind the burns and wings that Crowley wasn't sure would ever heal... maybe his body would go back to being a blank canvas on which someone could have written any history had desired. A demon of hell who collects wicked heinous souls, that's what he was, and it would have been enough to forget, forget, for—

"Crowley?" The voice startled him. He turned around, found with horror that Madame Tracy was behind him, surprised to see him in front of her door. 

"Did you need something, love?" 

"Ah, ngk, no. I er—"

"Would you like a cup of tea? "Asked the woman. 

"Ah, no. I don't want to disturb you."

"Don't be silly; come on. You're going to get cold out here." 

She took him by the arm, and he found himself stepping back unwittingly. The woman's hand remained for a moment on his forearm, a light, subtle touch, as if she knew burns dotted his body. She approached slowly, took his arm gently and only when she was sure that the contact didn't cause him any harm, she accompanied him silently inside the door.

Madame Tracy's apartment wasn't much different from how he remembered it: full of trinkets and extravagant. Colours mixed that made the house oddly pleasant. The woman went into the kitchen, and Crowley wondered, for a moment, why she had left the house. When asked, she replied that she didn't know. She had felt the urgent need to go out for a moment, perhaps to get some air. _Weird._

"Tell me, love. Is there anything I can do for you?"  Asked the woman with a kind smile sitting in front of him, only the delicate wooden table to divide them. 

"I—" Crowley began, "I would like to apologize, Tracy." He said, not daring to meet her gaze. 

"Oh, Crowley," she smiled. "You have nothing to apologize for." 

"Please. I need to do it." The demon said, still without looking at her, "I'm sorry I screamed, I behaved so stupidly to you and Shadwell." He tried to add more, but all the words he wanted to use were trapped in his throat.  He had never been good at that sort of thing.  
  
"Honey," she replied, "I smashed a vase on your head and handcuffed you to my bed. I'd guess we're even, don't you think?"

He couldn't stifle a weak laugh "Yeah, I didn't see that coming."

Both laughed but then remained for a few seconds in comfortable silence, sipping tea each lost in their thoughts. 

Madame Tracy, he noted, was beautiful and had that aura he remembered seeing only around the most loving mothers. He began to wonder if she had ever had children. Crowley quickly pushed that thought away, noting that in the woman's house there were no photos of children or young men and, he guessed, those were the kind of things a woman keeps at home, even if her children had grown up.  
Or at least, he thought so.

"Crowley," the woman suddenly said, pulling him away from his mental rambling "Can I ask you a question?"

"Sure." He hadn't touched his tea yet. His hands were shaking too much. He hoped the woman wouldn't notice it. 

"Do you know what kind of people come here?"

Crowley blushed. She remembered what Madame Tracy's two professions were. He didn't judge her for this (Obviously, one of his favourite humans had been a prostitute, after all.) b ut for some strange reasons imagine the kind woman in front of him in the same context, was extremely embarrassing. She let out an argentine laugh as if she had read for the umpteenth time what was whirling in his head.

"I don't mean _that_, love." He said lightly shaking a hand "I mean, do you know who comes to talk with Madame Tracy?" 

"No." He said still a little flustered. 

"People who have lost loved ones." She said, and the smile became a little sad. "You know, I think most of them knew it was all a scam. Losing a person who has been close to us for so long... well, it's destabilizing." 

Crowley clasped a hand to his chest. The snake inside him began to stir again.

"Is it so obvious?" 

"Sweetheart, with my job, I've seen so many things and I've become a kind of an expert." 

"It's just that," he tried to say, "she was terrible. Always whispering things, almost constantly, and I was so used to hearing that voice and seeing her that now... I should be happy, right? Relieved, sad?" He asked uncertainly "No, no, I shouldn't be sad, this is fucking ridiculous... I don't know what I'm supposed to feel, I don't feel anything and—" he stopped talking, realizing that he didn't know what to say.

The woman looked at him sadly, took his hand and caressed it tenderly. During those months when Crowley had refused to see anyone, afflicted with fever and fatigue, Aziraphale had never left his side. Occasionally, some of the four humans had gone to visit him, but he had always refused to see them.  The angel had mentioned something to Crowley but didn't know how far the angel had gone in explaining what had happened.  
It didn't matter at the moment.

"You know, love, sometimes we love people who hurt us," She said, and he wondered how she might have understood such a deep feeling that even he couldn't identify. 

"Mourning them, missing them, isn't stupid and don't make you weak, the emptiness they leave is still excruciating." Tracy looked at him, her sad smile didn't seem moved by pity but only by great affection. "Someone hurt you, and this is bad. But isn't your fault if they did it."  
She waited a moment, perhaps hoping for an answer from the man in front of her. When he didn't say anything, she retakes the lead.

"Did you talk to Aziraphale about it?" 

"I don't want to, it's humiliating." 

"Don't be ashamed of your feelings, Crowley." She said "That man loves you so much, you should have seen him. It would have moved seas and mountains to save you. But now he needs you to talk with him, to explain how you feel, and you need it too."

"I don't want him to think I'm crazy. I mean, he certainly already thinks so, but I can't tell him that I loved a person who has never been there."

"Don't be silly now." Madam Tracy said, "none of us thinks you're crazy."

"The thing is..." he said, squeezing his hand tightly around his shirt, welcoming for a moment the pain that sprang from his grasp, "she said something that scared me, something terrible." 

"What?" 

"That he — Crawly, the serpent— is still inside me."

He said, for a moment he felt a pang in the heart, not physical, it didn't hurt, but at the same time, the pain was excruciating. He felt his eyes sting, and for the first time in weeks (months, years?) He started to cry. He hid his face in his hands. "It's something I can't let happen; it's scary. I can't lose him, not again." 

The memory of lifeless Aziraphale beneath him, in a pool of blood, haunted him every time he met the angel's gaze.

Madame Tracy got up from her chair, for a moment Crowley thought she would throw him out of her home. (How cruelly ironic would it have been if the first person he felt close to like a mother cast him out? He didn't think he could bear it again.)

Instead, she went in front of his seat and hugged him gently, letting Crowley rest his head against her stomach. Loving hands stroked his hair, and she said sadly: "You already know you have to tell him. I understand that you want to protect him, but I can't imagine you trying to hurt Aziraphale. But you two are also a tad idiots, and you clearly need to talk."

"I'm going crazy in that apartment, Tracy. I can't stay there, every damned brick reminds me of what I did, and I'm not sure I can face that house so empty when Aziraphale leaves." 

"Why should he go away?" 

"I will scare him; he will run away like everyone always does."

"I am not running away, love. He certainly won't."

"You don't know the things I've done, how many times I've betrayed him."

"But he loves you despite everything, doesn't he? Let's go. I'll walk you home so you can talk to your beautiful angel. I carry a vase with me, and if he tries to run, I can throw it on his head." The woman said firmly, without breaking their embrace.

Crowley snorted, and it might have sounded like a laugh if it hadn't been choked with sobs. The woman waited patiently for him to let off steam. The heat emanating from her body was like a soothing balm, and the demon let himself be lulled for a moment by those gentle arms. He had no idea where the glasses had gone. In another moment, he would have been ashamed of his meltdown, so impetuous after weeks spent ignoring those feelings too hard to deal with.

He felt himself floating, not as had happened in the past, there was a sudden sense of calm, of relief in finally being able to feel something. When he had calmed down, Madame Tracy helped him to get up, and they walked towards the door. 

On the street, arm in arm and close to shield themselves from the cold, Tracy spoke about nothing, while the demon listened, confused by her kindness. Even before he could realize it, they were in front of his door's apartment.

"Madame Tracy!" Aziraphale greeted when they crossed the threshold. He had a worried look, probably because he was gone for hours, Crowley speculated. Or maybe it was because of his appearance, red face and puffy eyes after crying. Perhaps it was for both of them. 

"Hello, love. It looks like I caught a beautiful man in my clutches this morning." She said chuckling.

"Crowley..." sighed relieved Aziraphale. "Are you alright?" 

He didn't reply, but broke away from the woman's embrace with a faint smile, going to sit on the sofa with his arms crossed. 

"Madame Tracy, can I offer you a cup of tea?" Asked the angel, trying to sound natural, as if nothing had happened. 

"Oh, no love. I have some errands to do. See you soon."  She said and then she looked at Aziraphale, putting a finger to her lips, smiled and winked. She turned on her heels and left the door, leaving him frozen on the spot, with an elegant raised eyebrow that said: _What the heck just happened?_

For a while, there was silence, and the angel commented: "Madame Tracy refusing tea, what is the world coming?" 

"It's must be one of the seven signs of a new apocalypse," Crowley said hoarsely. Aziraphale gasped imperceptibly, no longer accustomed to the demon's sarcastic comments. He decided it was a good sign.

Sitting down next to him, he said, "How was your walk?" Not because it was the smartest thing to say, but they had been silent for so long that he believed Crowley would never speak again. 

"I'm scared." The demon blurted out. He didn't know how to start this conversation, he was afraid of not being able to express his feelings, and therefore he decided to spit the beans, say everything as quickly as possible. "I'm sad, I'm happy, I don't feel safe... all together. I don't know how to explain..." he said uncertainly. 

"Do your best, my dear." The angel encouraged him, surprised by his words. "I will stay here listening, no matter what you'll tell me."

Crowley let out a shaky sigh. Then he started talking, explaining everything, about how he had loved a cruel woman who had never existed, about the emptiness inside him, the snake in his chest and Crawly in the mirror. The constant fear the calm they were living in was nothing more than a soap bubble ready to burst at the slightest puff of wind. Even worse, it wasn't real. 

"But Crawly is real, angel. I can feel it as it untangles and coils up in the centre of my heart. I am terrified because one day he will take over and hurt you."

Aziraphale remained silent, looking intently at him with his beautiful blue eyes. "Why should he do it?" He asked curiously. 

"He is a demon." 

"Yes." The angel answered sincerely. 

"He condemned all mankind ... he is evil." 

Aziraphale took a moment to think about what to answer. He had no doubts about what he would say; he only felt the need to use the right words for once.

"I think you and I remember Crawly in a very different way." It was painful to have to talk about him in the third person, for his good he did it anyway. "My dear, he is the same demon that I shielded with my wings from the first rain, which made me hear the sound of the first instrument in human history. Who cried for the children left out of Ark, who sang for me during those lonely nights in Greece. Crawly is the same demon who didn't understand how someone could be punished for asking to be kind with each other."

Crowley looked at him with wide eyes, as if he couldn't process what he had just said.

"But he... is a demon. The snake coiled inside me, which has tempted humans to sin. It continually reminds me that one day he could harm you." He sighed "How can you trust him?"

"This is simple, my dear," Aziraphale replied with a smile, not even a note of hesitation in his voice. "I trust you. I have nothing to fear, no matter how many times I have to repeat it to you, you have done nothing but protect me. Now let me do the same for you."

"But then, how can you trust me? I killed a person, Aziraphale." He said, serious and with a terrified look as warm tears ran down his face. "I never did it before, I swear. I know I'm a demon, I should like this kind of thing, but I had never killed anyone. I want you to go away, I want you to stay, I would like to forget, but I'm afraid to do so. I know you said that in this way I saved her, but I can no longer hear speeches like _'everything happens for a greater purpose'_ because this doesn't change the fact that I killed an innocent person."  
There was sadness in the demon's trembling voice. Aziraphale looked at him, feeling a strange sense of relief in seeing that Crowley finally let go the tears.

(A peculiar feeling, it was, to be happy to see the person he loved most so desperate. But to see Crowley so apathetic, during those weeks spent in almost deadly silence, when he was usually so energetic and full of life, had been one terrifying spectacle. Where there were despair, fear and sadness, hope, courage and happiness could also blossom, and Aziraphale felt that that was his ultimate aim, his eternal mission: to restore peace and passion in the heart of his dearest friend.)

"I should be punished, angel. I don't know how to live with this weight on my conscience." He sighed deeply and added in melancholy tone "I don't know what to do, Aziraphale. I can't bear to be alone anymore." 

The angel smiled, the guardian inside him spread his wings wide and emitted enough light to darken the sun. In the apartment, he did none of this but shortened the distance, embraced the demon and replied:

"You know, my dear, I've been thinking a lot these days." He began, stroking his back. "I thought about time. How short it's for humans, how infinite it's for us. To how we acted like fools, especially me, how I drew a line between us that never existed. I thought about how it seems so absurd, but also so right that my body fits perfectly with yours as if we were two halves of an apple that matches perfectly." He paused, watching him with a sweet smile, then resumed his little monologue. 

"I won't insult you by saying I understand what you're feeling. The only thing I can say is that you saved that woman, Crowley. If you really believe you deserve punishment for it, my love, let me tell you one thing: God herself commanded me to save you. You have served your sentence, now is time for both to move forward, to start a new chapter as free beings. No matter how difficult it will be, I will be by your side at all times." He watched Crowley as he cried, and the demon felt a sense of relief expanding from the centre of the sternum. He looked tired, and Aziraphale held him a little closer.

"So here is what we will do: now I will accompany you to bed and lie down next to you. You will fall asleep, and I will wait for you to feel rested enough to wake up again. We will go back to the bookshop. Collect those few objects that are important to us  — my books, your plants, my tea, your Bentley, my dated clothes, your musical instruments— because perhaps, we should stop having something that's yours or mine alone and finally have something we can call ours."

"Ours?" 

"A house, for example. A bed, a garden. Friends, starry sky, quiet neighbourhood, days spent together and stopped thinking of us as two separate entities but as one."

"And you would do this for me?"

"I would do it for us."

"But... you love your bookshop."

"I love you more." Aziraphale replied with a soft smile, "There is only one thing I want from you if you accept my proposal."

"What?" Crowley asked with his eyes that glistened with tears and a hopeful gaze. 

"I wish you were trying to be kinder to Crawly. I love him immensely because he's part of you. If you still can't see it, I'll wait, I have enough love for both of you... but promise me you will try."

Crowley nodded softly, forgetting how words should be used. Aziraphale was quite satisfied anyway. He waited for the river of tears to subside. Crowley suddenly felt overwhelming fatigue, as if three hundred years of fear and terror had finally unravelled from his back. The angel accompanied him to bed, as he had promised, stood beside him, and when they were both comfortable, he began to run his fingers through his hair. 

"Now sleep, my love. I will watch over you; I won't allow anyone to disturb your rest. You will wake up, having had a lovely dream about whatever you like best."

〄

**You will wake up, having had a lovely dream about whatever you like best.**

For the first time in centuries, he doesn't have nightmares. Crowley dreams of a garden, the soft grass under his stomach, two lovers dancing naked on a lawn.  He dreams of white wings that protect him from the rain, bright green leaves, someone who whispers sweet words in his ear. 

Were nothing worldly these dreams but something domestic that he had always wanted: cooking for dinner, spreading a white tablecloth and set for two.  Watering plants, someone reading a book aloud. A small cottage with wooden furniture, a large greenhouse in the back with glass walls to let the sun in. Wear a white suit. A sofa covered with a terrible tartan pattern that he would have loved, quiet nights spent sipping hot cocoa and looking at the stars.  Every now and then there was music played at high volume, a machine that speeds fast, the sweet sound of a piano.  In this context, the thing that dreams most often is an angel who always stays with him, who loves him and who will never stop.

And then: 

Dream of children running in a meadow. Someone steals an apple, small hands reaching out to grab it. They laugh, someone gets angry, but no misfortune happens. They are just children, they are used to the idea of growing up and changing, getting into trouble and then being forgiven. 

The promise of love, snow falling gently, flowers that bloom. 

He dreams of a summer that begins without ever ending, in a garden that is all their own, from where they will never be driven out and where there are apples that no one has forbidden to eat.

And then: 

Dream of a cemetery. 

He sees a girl, blonde hair and light eyes wrapped in a black dress. The woman approaches, and he looks at her curiously. For a moment he's afraid of her, he's ready to bolt, to run away. 

The girl stops next to a grave. Perhaps he would have really run away if it weren't for the girl who slowly raises a hand and removes the heavy veil from her face; she reveals itself. 

He looks at her better, and maybe he was wrong. Her expression is tender, her blond hair shines like the sun, she wears a light, snow-white dress. And God, She's beautiful. 

She smiles, looks at him gently and says "Thanks."

And then: 

He dreams of being on the eastern wall of Eden. Beside him, Crawly.  
The two demons wear a long dark tunic, ruined and burnt at the ends, are barefoot, have long fiery red hair, yellow snake eyes, black wings spread behind their backs. Neither angels, nor demons, nor humans could have understood the difference between the two. The same goes for them.

"Well, that's odd." Says the one on the right. 

"Should I say '_Well, that went down like a lead balloon_'?" 

"Don't steal my lines." 

"Yeah, seems fair."

For a while there is an embarrassed silence, the two start looking at the horizon again. 

"Did you understand what happened?" asks one, genuinely confused. 

"Ah, uh... not entirely, honestly." 

"You know, I think I've gone too far with you. You never tried to hurt Aziraphale. I don't think you would ever do that."

"Well, thanks for finally noticing." The tone is sarcastic and acerbic, but it hides a streak of relief. "However, I don't think he needs much protection. What did we save him from, some paperwork? He has protected and cared for you for three hundred years without ever asking for anything in return. He is perfectly capable of looking after himself."

"He entered a church asking the Almighty to let him fall if she really believed he was a sinner for loving me." 

_"He did what?!" _The other ask, shocked.

"I swear on G— Sat— Someone he doesn't have any sense of self-preservation." 

"Maybe that's why I love him." 

"When did you understand it?" 

"Here, on this wall. Immediately after saying he had given the sword to the humans." a pause "You?"

"Rome. He tempted me to go to lunch with him. Can you believe it? An angel tempting a demon." The two laugh out loud, it takes a while before recovering.

"I was thinking... the apple." 

"All you do is thinking about that damned apple." 

"Maybe you did the right thing giving it to men." 

"I believe," says the other "In the end, an apple is just an apple. Humans have always been like this, potentially good and evil."

"Maybe it was just something destined to happen. You know, ineffable."

"You... talking about ineffability?" He asks with a snort "Really, this is the strangest conversation I've ever had."

"Maybe Aziraphale has always been right, and we were stupid enough not understand."

"We?" 

"You and I." Specifies the other. 

"So you... er... forgive me for falling?" He turns to look at him, and for the first time, their eyes meet. The demon in front of him has bright eyes, yellow mirrors reflecting his, like gemstones. He reaches out to him, embracing him and creating small circles between the shoulder blades, along the junction of the wings, trying to console the demon who is now crying in his arms. The other only takes a moment to reciprocate the gesture.

"I'm beginning to believe that maybe it wasn't a mistake falling. Sure, it hurt, but Heaven wasn't good for us, we always asked too many questions. This doesn't mean we deserved Hell. But if we hadn't fallen, we would never have met Aziraphale."

He cries, and the copper-haired demon continues to draw small circles along his back. 

"I was a fool not to understand that you are as much a part of me as I am of you and I'm sorry, you've been alone for far too long. Don't worry, I'm here for you now." 

They remain embraced a little longer. When they separate, both have red cheeks and seem slightly embarrassed.

"Such a nice person." teases one. 

"Ah, stop it." chuckles the other.


	13. The very first day of the rest of their life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which a demon wakes up, a lot of beautiful things happens, and there's also an apple tree.

The very first day of the rest of his life starts with blue. Gold threads. The peach pink colour. Crowley blinks a couple of times, finding that blue is none other than Aziraphale's eyes watching him as he regains consciousness. 

The golden threads are his hair, usually so light as to seem white as snow, which with the summer sun that enters the window behind him become the same colour of a jewel, as if a halo framing his face. Peach pink is his skin, soft and warm. Crowley blinks. He does it slowly, repeatedly, because the angel in front of him is a heavenly vision and until now, he had never truly understood how beautiful and bright he is.

"Good morning, my love." The man chirps.  
"Angel." He says with shining eyes, still a little sleepy. Crowley closes his eyes for a moment, reopens them, but the angel is still there. He lets out a sigh that didn't know was holding back. Not a vision then, he thinks.

"Did you sleep well?" "Angel... I... how long?"  
"A month." He says, with a relaxed look. Crowley tastes the air, and there is something different because the atmosphere around him tastes of jasmine tea, old books and warm wood. 

"Are we in the bookshop?" he asks.  
"In the apartment above." Confirm Aziraphale. "Since you didn't wake up I took the liberty of moving some of your stuff here, I hope you don't mind."

"No, no... it's fine." Crowley looks at him, still lying between soft and white blankets "I... angel, Zira, I... I had a beautiful dream, so many, never felt so happy, and I believe... I believe... _I think I am going to have a heart attack!_" stutters. 

He brings a hand to his heart, Aziraphale looks at him, opening his eyes wide. Crowley sees them become huge while the angel carries a hand on his chest, listening to the heartbeat fast like the flapping of a hummingbird's wings. But Crowley doesn't seem suffering, he smiles relaxed, has tears in his eyes but doesn't look sad.  
  
"Ah, you silly serpent," Aziraphale says with the expression of one to whom all the feathers are ruffled. "You will make the heart attack come to me."

Both laugh until they cry out of joy. Until the laughter turns into kisses, many kisses, let's say that the kisses were so many that they were impossible to count. It was a long time before they were able to separate.  
Neither of them seemed inclined to complain about it.

A hundred declarations of love beyond — and other kisses, of course. Phrases that seem to come from a poem written in the fifteenth century, because Aziraphale had never stopped talking about Crowley as a lover during the Renaissance. Not that the demon was any better since he rarely gave up a little scenic effect — Crowley finds himself sitting between Anathema and Tracy, sipping a cup of tea and watching Aziraphale while he lays down his precious books in big boxes. Beside him, Shadwell and Newt help him dismantle the heavy shelves.

"So, Crowley. When are you going to get married?" Asks Anathema and Crowley for a moment is choking with the tea.  
"Exactly, when?" The other insists.  
"Ah, uh, ngk... don't you think it's a little too early?"

"Too early?!" The women ask in chorus.  
"You're danced around one another for six thousand years like two chickens pecking from the same bowl. I would say that the time has come to make Aziraphale make you an honest demon, love." Madame Tracy says, playing with the hair of the demon who still has his red face hidden in the teacup. 

"I don't want to go too fast for him." He says.  
"Oh, enough of this nonsense." Anathema snorts. "I really think you're going at the same speed."  
"You sure?"  
"I said what I said." She says firmly.

"You have to hurry up and get married. I'm already out of date, I don't want to look like a wrinkled old woman when you say your vows," Tracy says chuckling. For a moment, Crowley has a strange light in his eyes, takes the hand of the red-haired woman and squeezes it.  
"Tracy, you are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. If I get married I don't want you at my wedding, you would make me look bad." He says, with a cunning smile.  
"Oh, love, you're the sweetest demon I've ever known."

"And I'm the most jealous girl who ever lived in this universe! I mean, should I go tell Aziraphale that someone is trying to steal his boyfriend?" asks sarcastically, Anathema.   
  
The three starts laughing, "For now I'm happy just like this. Marriage is a human concept, we don't need it... I think." Crowley says, putting an arm around Anathema's shoulder.  
His face is still red as a tomato when Aziraphale appears from behind one of the shelves. He can hear Shadwell babbling about how a demon attempted at idleness the two women since they refused to help him and Newt, cursing very softly for hammering his finger. 

"What are you three talking about?" The angel asks with an innocent look.  
"Nothing!" The two women and the demon respond in chorus, all three with a grin on their faces.

〄

Life moves quickly when you are no longer afraid of looking in the mirror. It's a bit like falling, but it's such a sweeter feeling. Crowley and Aziraphale have always been two fixed points in a world that moves much faster than they do. Without ever-changing, every day, century, still the same as that early afternoon of six thousand years ago when, for the first time, they had spoken.  
Perhaps, the demon says one day, while looking at the cottage they had just bought, the time had come for them to change too. 

They mutually agree to cut with magic. They start or at least try, to live like two average humans if you don't count that they don't grow old, that the cottage seems to have many more rooms than it should — which would drive insane any surveyor — and that the washing machine is as blessed as cursed.

For now, Crowley is firmly scolded by anyone every time he lifts something more substantial than a sheet of paper. This because Aziraphale says that even though the burns have healed almost entirely, the wings take much longer. Crowley is still weak and fragile, but the angel assures him that they are improving and he's recovering. Aziraphale tells him that it'll be better soon and Crowley believes him.

_   
(By "firmly scolded" is meant that the demon is often stopped by any act that may seem even remotely Tiring — with a necessary capital letter — in the most different ways. The most hilarious anecdotes, for all except the demon, is when Shadwell had lifted and transported him to the sofa like a sack of potatoes, after having surprised Crowley trying to retrieve some of his musical instruments to bring them in the car. Protests, threats, (fake) curses, were to no avail. The man and Tracy wrapped him in a thick blanket so tight that the demon seemed to be the missing link between the occult and a Burrito. _

_ The second time — Aziraphale still tells this story when they reunite for Christmas — was when the demon had walked to his apartment to retrieve the Bentley. Newt and Shadwell, his self-proclaimed bodyguards, had followed him all the way trying not to get noticed. Crowley, obviously, had seen them but pretended not to. This, until Newt had taken the car keys. The protests of the two had served nothing, Crowley had literally anchored himself to the car screaming:  _

_ "Not even in a million years, not even a holy water's swimming pool will convince me to let you drive my precious car. I saw what you do to computers, I will never let you touch the love of my life with your finger!" _

_ "Listen to that, I thought I was the love of your life!" Says with a devilish smile, that bastard of Aziraphale, appearing out of nowhere.  _

_ "Angel now isn't the time, and anyway if you have enough love for Crawly and me, I have enough for you and Bentley. The point is that no one besides me can guide my sweetheart."  _

_ Crowley didn't know what had happened. He only knew he was in the passenger seat, a nervous and sweaty Anathema was slowly driving the Bentley through the streets of London. Despite being an old model, therefore terribly difficult to drive, the girl excellently handled the car, especially considering that Crowley had observed every gesture with the expression of a snake pointing a mouse.) _

_ _

〄

There are quiet evenings now.  
Sunny afternoons, lighthearted days, nights spent sipping expensive wine while old anecdotes were told. 

When Crowley inspects his garden, the plants tremble under his gaze. Now, when he screams, it looks more like a play, and the plants are happy to do their part. They express their full potential, the leaves become greener, those that can, bloom. Fruit plants offer delicacies. Everything to make their beloved serpent happy.

_ (But above all, they're terrified of Aziraphale. The angel praises them almost constantly, but when he notices a spot on a leaf, he looks at it and says "Really, I'm not angry, I'm just disappointed. Don't you think Crowley deserves better?" The plants decide by mutual agreement that it would have been better if he had started screaming, they can't bear the guilt. The result is that theirs is the most beautiful garden in the whole South Down.) _

There is something that he hadn't planted that grows in the garden. Crowley only realises this a few weeks later. Look at the bud with an eyebrow raised.  
"What are you?" Asks. Every now and then he threatens it. The sprout never seems to be frightened, and this disturbs him immensely.

A year passes, and the bud grows and becomes a tree. 

"An apple tree, angel," Crowley says looking worriedly at the sapling that sits quietly on the edge of the garden.   
_"A fucking apple tree."_ repeats.  
Aziraphale doesn't need to hear, for the umpteenth time, that there is an apple tree in their garden. He can very well see it for himself.  
  
"Maybe it's a symbol of peace." He says. "Her way to say that she is happy that you're feeling better."   
"Then she would have planted an olive tree, not an apple tree."  
"Maybe it was just the wind that brought the seed to our garden, dear." 

"The wind?"  
"A... er... coincidence."  
"You were going to say Ineffable, weren't you?" 

"I'm just saying that maybe it's nothing more than a simple apple tree."  
"It can't be a coincidence."  
"Well," says Aziraphale while sipping tea "at least it's not a speaking burning bush."

For Aziraphale, it's a simple apple tree, but Crowley doesn't trust.  
He forbid everyone to eat the apples of the tree for safety, never water it or care about it, yet the tree grows strong and luxuriant. 

When he feels particularly acrimonious towards it, he enters the house, takes an axe and leaves it leaning against the trunk, just to keep the point and remind it that he could always cut it down. Not that he dare, mind you.

It all happens one day in July three years later: everyone is chatting amiably while The Them play in the garden. Adam and Dog chase each other, Pepper pushes Brian and yells at him, Wensleydale he is faking his own death for reasons that no one will understand. Everyone laughs and has fun. 

This, until Pepper, climbs the tree. Peel off one of the fruits and bite it. Adam shouts something, and she throws the apple at him. The boy imitates the girl. 

Crowley, who has seen the whole scene, lets out a strangled cry.  
Standing next to him, Aziraphale puts a hand on his shoulder. Both look at the clear sky, and for a moment, there is a profound silence.  
There is no thunder nor lightning.  
No thundering voices, no convictions, nothing.  
The sky is still bright, and Crowley looks at it with his eyes wide open, astounded.

"Well ..." Aziraphale says, swallowing loudly. "This makes you bring back some memories."  
Crowley looks at him, still trembling. "A very journey down Memory Lane, angel."

〄

What Aziraphale loves most is watching Crowley return to being the old demon of the past: sarcastic, brave, funny, cunning and kind.  
He watches him take care of his plants, doze off on every horizontal surface of the house, lazily sunbathe in summer, crouch under a mountain of blankets in winter. Aziraphale watches him, make sure the demon feels safe. At night, he wraps himself around him, he kisses his forehead, nose, cheeks, views as the demon blushes, feels him tremble slightly and squeezes him a little more to himself because in those moments Crowley seems a little more delicate than usual. 

But he is there, solid and firm. 

Crowley looks at him with his amber eyes, as he takes his hands, crosses his fingers with his. Both lie on the bed. Sometimes they did this. They stay there doing nothing, simply enjoying each other's presence. Aziraphale spreads his wings over the demon's head, covering him totally to keep him warm.

"Angel?" 

"Yes?" 

"Is this real?" 

"Of course, my dear." 

"Sometimes I don't believe it. Seems too good." 

A beat.

"Crowley?" 

"Yes?" 

"Can I reveal a secret to you?" 

"You can tell me anything, angel." 

"Sometimes think it's a dream too. For example, when I'm this happy."

"Really?" 

"Yes. But I know it's real."

"How?" 

"It seems right... as if we were meant to be here right now, next to me." 

Another beat. 

"Aziraphale." 

"Tell me, my dear." 

"I feel that this is real too."

〄

The very first day of Aziraphale's life hadn't started when Crowley had awakened. It wasn't even when he saw the demon get better, speak in a slightly sweeter tone, smile more often, sleep more deeply. 

There is still something missing, he says, as if all the pieces had returned to their place, less than one. He doesn't know what it is, he cannot see it as a whole, as if it were a small detail that could be considered insignificant if it weren't incredibly important. Aziraphale watches the demon doze on the sofa and says to himself to have faith.  
Be patient.  
Be brave.  
Because every dawn was a blessing, a kiss, a caress. Aziraphale wouldn't give up for anything in the world.

The very, _very_, first day of Aziraphale's life begins when he wakes up one morning — because he has taken the habit of sleeping with the demon and, with his surprise, he had started to enjoy it since can wake up next to Crowley— and feels the water from the shower flow. Except it isn't just water, there is also another noise.  
_Oh,_ think amazed, _the noise is Crowley humming in the shower._

The very, _very, very_, first day of Aziraphale's life begins when Crowley starts to sing while cooking. He has a bright smile, a voice so beautiful, so warm and soft, that even Aziraphale's books protrude imperceptibly from the Library to listen better. Crowley looks at him, smiles winking, takes him in his arms and ignores breakfast for a moment:

_Dining at the Ritz, we'll meet at nine precisely  
_ _I will pay the bill, you taste the wine  
_ _Driving back in style, in my saloon will do quite nicely  
_ _Just take me back to yours that will be fine._

Aziraphale laughs and looks at him with, and he's enamoured. Crowley sings, placing his hands around his waist. And it's a bit as if an old friend who hadn't seen for centuries had suddenly returned from a long journey. Aziraphale realises that he had terribly missed hearing the demon sing.

The very, _very, very, very, _first day of Aziraphale's life begins when they are sitting in the Bentley and Crowley is singing so loud that he can barely hear the roar of the engine, he drives his car fast with the same smile as when he was about to make some mischief.

_You're the first one  
_ _When things turn out bad  
_ _You know I'll never be lonely  
_ _You're my only one  
_ _And I love the things  
_ _I really love the things that you do  
_ _Oh, you're my best friend_

Aziraphale looks at him, and he's beautiful. He finally understands why Crowley loves music so much, his car and his plants. He understands why he had always surrounded himself with all these things. He can feel the love he pours into every single note and word. Before, they were the only things that comforted his oldest friend. The angel loves them now, he loves them as much as he loves him. So do something he had never done before: sing with him.

_I'm happy at home  
_ _You're my best friend  
_ _Oh, you're my best friend  
_ _Ooh, you make me live  
_ _You're my best friend_

The very, _very, very, very, very, _first day of Aziraphale's life is when the demon plays the guitar, the piano, or the saxophone, or any of his instruments.  
Fingers move quickly between strings and piano-keys. Sometimes Crowley looks relaxed, sometimes amused, but most of the time he merely seems happy. 

Perhaps the very, _very, very, very, very,_ first day of his life is when the demon returns to tempt humans, not as he once did when he was forced to do it on hell's behalf, these new temptations are all his work.   
So he stays in the middle of the road, follows random humans, reads their darkest desires, whispering in their ears.

He says: Yes, buy that dress, you would be gorgeous.  
He says: If your husband mistreats you, you should leave him.  
He says: If you don't like your job, change it. 

Crowley goes around, clues some coins on the sidewalk, tempt to rebellion, vanity, sloth and Aziraphale should stop him. Still, there is a much happier mood now on the streets of London, so he decides that to stop him, the only solution is to invite him to the Ritz for dinner. 

_ (Because he's an angel who has known his nemesis for a long time. Dinner is what it takes to stop the serpent's dark plans. Crowley laughs when he tells him.) _

〄

No, maybe not.  
Maybe the very, _very, very, very, very,_ first day begins on that afternoon in May, when they are in the middle of the garden that has never been so beautiful. They hold their hands together, listen to the officiant who is going to marry them, trying to catch the other eyes all the time, as if it has become a game that suddenly she is forced to stop and say:

"Do you need a moment, gentlemen?" 

Everyone laughs and they blush but then return to look at each other smiling as two children who have just made a prank. After exchanging their vows, they turn for a moment and look at the few friends who accompanied them, as if they wanted to impress their smiling faces in the memory.  
Too bad that everyone was crying.

"Maybe we overdid it." Aziraphale comments and then turns to Crowley. "Hell yes, angel." Crowley says he manages not to cry only thanks to a miracle — and a little help from Anathema's magic because the night before he had risked dirtying his white dress crying like a schoolgirl because '_we are getting married tomorrow'_. and to hell 'Marriage Is Just a Human Concept.'— "Quoting A Farewell to Arms, by Hemingway was a low blow."

The officiant says: Someone told me that Crowley and Aziraphale have known each other since the beginning of time, and they fell in love at first sight on a wall of a garden, on a rainy day. But to see them so happy today I can say with certainty that there will be no clouds on their path, and that from now on the sky will be clear because they have chosen to belong to each other for eternity.

She winks at both and Crowley looks at Aziraphale, with a raised, confused eyebrow. But the shadow of the apple tree plays with the light on his hair, and the eyes are shiny. He can feel the love of the angel invading him completely. Realise that he had never felt so complete and happy. Every sarcastic comment is immediately forgotten because the demon remains bewitched by the light he radiates.

_(But really, Crowley says to the angel thirty years later on a quiet evening after the third bottle of wine, Who did tell to that woman about the garden, the wall and the rain? Because I didn't do it, you either, Tracy and Anathema said no... how on earth did she know?  
It has been too long. They would never know the answer.)_

Or maybe, the very, _very, very, very, very,_ first day of his life is when Crowley smiles beneath him, almost relaxed, his skin slightly sweaty and warm. He trembles but this time it isn't out of fear.   
  
Aziraphale just needs to be sure: "Is everything all right, my dear?"  
"Yes." He says almost breathless. "You can do anything you want because you are you, and I've never felt so safe as when I'm in your arms."

Aziraphale looks at him and sees a particular light in his eyes, not only desire, not only unconditional love, not only peace and happiness.  
There is also the promise to stay together forever, the world could disappear, and he wouldn't notice it because Crowley's gaze is hypnotic.

"Now hold me." says the demon, inviting. "I need to feel a little closer to you, I have desired you for so long, angel." 

Aziraphale does as he's told. Once Crowley would do anything for him, and now he finds it impossible not to fulfil his every wish.  
"I love you." He whispers Aziraphale softly as if he doesn't want to disturb the tranquillity around them. "I love you too, since that garden, that wall, that rainstorm. I never loved if not you."

〄

Now, when something horrible happens in the world, when humans become more terrifying than demons and hell, Crowley trembles with fear and despair. He stops blaming himself, and that's just enough to allow Aziraphale to hug and reassure him. 

Once, Crowley wouldn't have cared. 

No, it's not fair to say so, because the demon loved humans so much that he blamed himself for all their terrible actions. But before, he would go to sleep for a century, or start lying to himself saying it wasn't important, it didn't matter, he didn't care. He would go to a bar and drink until he could forget his own name. 

Instead, now, for once, he says: _This is important.  
  
_

He spent all his life saying _it isn't important_ — and if not all his life, most of it — repeating that the fall, the pain, what he did with himself wasn't enough to care. 

Aziraphale says: _It matters because you're important to me._  
And so Crowley decides that yes, it is important, essential even, and perhaps he must stop thinking as he once did because he matters too. 

It's a new perspective, sometimes it's scary, sometimes it's reassuring. Because now when Crowley looks in the mirror, he doesn't see a monster, a demon. Sometimes he sees Crawly, other times he sees himself. But even when it happens, it's not terrifying, but it's like finding an old photo of when you were younger.

Aziraphale hears Crowley say, in a voice a bit shaky, _"I am important too."_ and he finally stops waiting for his very first day to come. He recognises that he has been ridiculous because there are simply too many days, too many new experiences, to share with the demon. He doesn't realise it immediately, all of a sudden, he simply begins to live in the moment, until one day:

**Ständchen**

[ **(Leise flehen meine Lieder)** ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4ikzrzac4w)

** Da Schwanengesang, D.957 ** **No.4**

(While an angel makes tea for him and the demon he loves.)

**Serata in D minore, 3/4**

  
The music started out of nowhere. Sweet and delicate, melancholic, white and black. The sound of a violin invades the house. The notes twirl between old books and brand new furniture. At the sound, the angel lets go of the cup of tea and look around. The heart beats wildly, it been years now he hasn't heard it, too many unpleasant memories that overlap around the sound of a violin. He looks for the demon everywhere, finds it under the veranda's arbour.

"Oh," he says.

The man in front of him is dressed in black from head to toe, has a soft braid that dangles on one shoulder, tall and thin, his eyes closed and his cheek resting on the violin he's playing.  
With his arm, he follows the bow he holds tightly in his hand as if he were painting more than playing.  
The moonlight partially illuminates him, makes the gold ring of the left-hand shine, identical to that worn by Aziraphale. 

"Remember this song, angel?"  
  
Aziraphale closes his eyes, listens carefully because he would have sworn he never hear it before. Still, it also sounds quite familiar and nostalgic, like a delicate caress from a loved one.

**Moderato, tempo rubato.**

"Oh," he repeats. "The Song!" He says, surprised. 

They had heard it six millennia before when together they followed Eve and stopped to listen to the woman sing for little Cain. Aziraphale remembered with how much admiration the demon had listened to the song because that subdued murmur wasn't only first mother's lullaby for her child. The notes were the same that God sang to his angels before the Fall when the universe was young, and sadness and despair didn't exist yet. 

"Look at the stars, angel." Says the demon. 

He does, surprised when he realizes that the stars move following music, as if they were enchanted too by the skill with which Crowley runs his fingers along the strings.  
A human wouldn't have seen it, reflects Aziraphale. For them, the stars are only fixed points that float motionless in the sky. But the two of them can see the movement of the cosmos, feel the evolution of the earth.

"I once tempted an old composer," Crowley says. "I asked him to hide these notes for me in one of his compositions. I was too fond of that old song, but if my lot had caught me playing it—"

"I've been trying to rewrite it for a while." He says.  
"I tried on the piano when you weren't there. With the guitar and even with the saxophone. With the lyre and the harp.  It seems to work only with the violin."

**Dolce in crescendo, continuato.**

"It seems a little melancholy," Aziraphale says listening to the beautiful notes that follow one after the other.

"All serenades seem a little melancholy when you play them with the violin."

"I never noticed."

The demon opens his eyes for a moment, looks at him intensely.   
  
"You know, I've been thinking a lot these days."

"Yes?"

"Yes."

"Have you discovered anything?"

“I found out,” says the demon, “that it was surprisingly easy to forgive Crawly. Easy, to forgive him for falling, I should have understood it sooner."

He hesitates only for a moment.

"Maybe now is the time to forgive God too."

"Really?" Aziraphale asks in surprise.

"Maybe this song is melancholy because she knew what would happen, maybe she tried to soothe us before we fell."

"I..." he says, breathing in deeply, without ever stopping playing. “I never wanted to go back. I never wanted heaven." 

He let the music dance around them a moment more.

"I... I... I've only wanted you all this time."

"I know, my dear. The same thing goes for me." Whispers Aziraphale.

Crowley is so beautiful that it obscures the stars that move above them.

"So, angel, let me finish playing my serenade for you and allow me to tempt you to spend eternity next to me. This life on earth is beautiful."

Aziraphale looks at him. There is a light that evening; he doesn't know how to describe, there are no human languages and words that can grasp the feeling that wraps around his heart.

"Temptation accomplished." He says, smiling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before I start to cry like a widow at his husband's funeral (ah, I didn't notice) this is the quote from A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway:
> 
> "At night, there was the feeling that we had come home, feeling no longer alone, waking in the night to find the other one there, and not gone away; all other things were unreal. We slept when we were tired, and if we woke the other one woke too, so one was not alone. Often a man wishes to be alone, and a woman wishes to be alone too, and if they love each other they are jealous of that in each other, but I can truly say we never felt that. We could feel alone when we were together, alone against the others. We were never lonely and never afraid when we were together."
> 
> Mostly because Crowley and Aziraphale are two lonely beings and they started to know each other because they were lonely. The fact that they love to be lonely together seems beautiful to me.
> 
> Why "Ständchen"? Because it's a beautiful serenata and probably @cyanidechan would talk for hours about it (but I've mercy so I won't let her) it's a bit melancholic and sweet, and you should read the song's lyric: https://www.oxfordlieder.co.uk/song/988
> 
> Utterly sorry for this delay, I hate to let people wait, but unfortunately I had more work than I expected, and my thesis is overwhelming me to no ends.  
I wanted to finish this story differently, but I thought that who followed it from the start needs a bit of comfort after all this angst. 
> 
> (You can see me struggling to be soft, I hate to be soft, look what these ineffable soft husbands are doing to me.)
> 
> Also, I just wanted to say thank you to every single person that commented on this story (or who will) I hope that if you finish reading this, you'll find the time to give me some feedback since I love to read your opinions!
> 
> wow, now I'm emotional, fancy that ahah  
Have a good day/night


End file.
